{"title":"Short Stories \u0026 Essays","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore short stories and essay collections built for reading in smaller bites, from tightly crafted short story collections to essays that stick with you well after the last page. Chosen by our booksellers, these are the ones we keep recommending for readers short on time but not on curiosity. Shop short stories in-store in St. Paul, or order online.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-land-of-sweet-forever-stories-and-essays","title":"The Land of Sweet Forever: Stories and Essays","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrom one of America's most beloved authors, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces, offering a fresh perspective on the remarkable literary mind of Harper Lee.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHarper Lee remains a landmark figure in the American canon - thanks to Scout, Jem, Atticus, and the other indelible characters in her Pulitzer-winning debut, \u003cem\u003eTo Kill a Mockingbird\u003c\/em\u003e; as well as for the darker, late-'50s version of small-town Alabama that emerged in \u003cem\u003eGo Set a Watchman\u003c\/em\u003e, her only other novel, published in 2015 after its rediscovery. Less remembered, until now, however, is Harper Lee the dogged young writer, who crafted stories in hopes of magazine publication; Lee the lively New Yorker, Alabamian, and friend to Truman Capote; and the Lee who peppered the pages of \u003cem\u003eMcCall's \u003c\/em\u003eand \u003cem\u003eVogue \u003c\/em\u003ewith thoughtful essays in the latter part of the twentieth century.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Land of Sweet Forever \u003c\/em\u003ecombines Lee's early short fiction and later nonfiction in a volume offering an unprecedented look at the development of her inimitable voice. Covering territory from the Alabama schoolyards of Lee's youth to the luncheonettes and movie houses of midcentury Manhattan, \u003cem\u003eThe Land of Sweet Forever \u003c\/em\u003einvites still-vital conversations about politics, equality, travel, love, fiction, art, the American South, and what it means to lead an engaged and creative life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis collection comes with an introduction by Casey Cep, Harper Lee's appointed biographer, which provides illuminating background for our reading of these stories and connects them both to Lee's life and to her two novels.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper Lee","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53090701869269,"sku":"BS-I6J-460515","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0777\/7170\/2485\/files\/9780063460515-HD.jpg?v=1770323483"},{"product_id":"pythons-kiss-stories","title":"Python's Kiss: Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich, a captivating collection of short stories\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eIt was as though I was chosen--marked out by the python's kiss for wisdom or maybe sorrow. Or perhaps, I think now, a sense of the ridiculous in extremes of experience. Also, I hoped for a long life.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWritten over the past two decades, Louise Erdrich's magnificent story collection features a range of characters--a tribal newsletter editor whose son tells her a story that nothing in her experience can encompass, immigrant farmers whose tenuous hold on the earth, and sanity, is challenged, and ordinary people, bird lovers, artists, grade-school teachers, and romantics. A girl decides to spend her life with a stone. A man is confronted with a folk-singing thief. A woman enters a corporately owned afterlife to seek revenge on her father. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAccompanied by specially commissioned artwork by Aza Erdrich Abe--an intimate and revelatory creative collaboration between mother and daughter--these stories offer an oppor­tunity to celebrate the wisdom and brilliant, wide-ranging imagination of one of America's most important writers.","brand":"Louise Erdrich","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53204407255253,"sku":"BS-I6J-375000","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0777\/7170\/2485\/files\/9780063375000-HD.jpg?v=1771092428"},{"product_id":"ghost-stories-of-edith-wharton-wordsworth-mystery-book","title":"Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton | Wordsworth Mystery Book","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton | Wordsworth Tales of Mystery \u0026amp; the Supernatural | Book\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eGhost Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton. Traumatized by ghost stories in her youth, Pulitzer Prize winning author Edith Wharton (1862 -1937) channeled her fear and obsession into creating a series of spine-tingling tales filled with spirits beyond the grave and other supernatural phenomena. While claiming not to believe in ghosts, paradoxically she did confess that she was frightened of them. Wharton imbues this potent irrational and imaginative fear into her ghostly fiction to great effect. In this unique collection of finely wrought tales Wharton demonstrates her mastery of the ghost story genre.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Marble City Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53463968710869,"sku":"9781840226270","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0777\/7170\/2485\/files\/e5f734170bf934fd3bafe2e39e48838b89ab876b604710d7f9476d0459532441.jpg?v=1774020423"},{"product_id":"the-yellow-wallpaper-short-stories-from-the-19th-century","title":"The Yellow Wallpaper \u0026 Short Stories from the 19th Century","description":"Short Stories from the 19th Century is a wonderful collection of classic stories specially selected and introduced by David Stuart Davies. These tales are from the golden age of the great storytellers, presenting evocative snapshots from that bygone era while at the same time providing engaging entertainment and stimulation for the modern reader.\n\nAll emotions are catered for in the offerings by Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Mrs Gaskell, O Henry, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, Wilkie Collins, Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Charlotte Perkins Gillman and Charles Lamb. Through their words, the rich pageant of yesterday springs to vibrant life. Each story has its own introduction and there is a set of informative notes. This volume is ideal reading for the student as well as those who relish a good tale well told.","brand":"Marble City Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53559192158421,"sku":"9781840224078","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0777\/7170\/2485\/files\/7d13e007dbf66223799d4b3065a6a04ed00dd1de1c1aaf7e16f603b40ed39cc2.jpg?v=1775154979"},{"product_id":"pythons-kiss-stories-1","title":"Python's Kiss: Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"[A] spectacular collection. . . . A staggering sense of empathy infuses the stories. With its range of voices and styles, this puts Erdrich's powers on full display.\" -- \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e (Starred Review)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich, a captivating collection of short stories\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eIt was as though I was chosen--marked out by the python's kiss for wisdom or maybe sorrow. Or perhaps, I think now, a sense of the ridiculous in extremes of experience. Also, I hoped for a long life.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWritten over the past two decades, Louise Erdrich's magnificent story collection features a range of characters--a tribal newsletter editor whose son tells her a story that nothing in her experience can encompass, immigrant farmers whose tenuous hold on the earth, and sanity, is challenged, and ordinary people, bird lovers, artists, grade-school teachers, and romantics. A girl decides to spend her life with a stone. A man is confronted with a folk-singing thief. A woman enters a corporately owned afterlife to seek revenge on her father.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAccompanied by specially commissioned artwork by Aza Erdrich Abe--an intimate and revelatory creative collaboration between mother and daughter--these stories offer an oppor­tunity to celebrate the wisdom and brilliant, wide-ranging imagination of one of America's most important writers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Louise Erdrich","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53710255816917,"sku":"BS-I6J-474321","price":36.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0777\/7170\/2485\/files\/9780063474321-HD.jpg?v=1777047594"},{"product_id":"the-source-of-self-regard-selected-essays-speeches-and-meditations","title":"The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eNATIONAL BESTSELLER \u003c\/b\u003e- Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that \"speaks to today's social and political moment as directly as this morning's headlines\" (NPR).\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThese pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9\/11, her Nobel lecture on the power of language, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., her heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. She looks deeply into the fault lines of culture and freedom: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, \"black matter(s),\" human rights, the artist in society, the Afro-American presence in American literature. And she turns her incisive critical eye to her own work (\u003ci\u003eThe Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, \u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eParadise)\u003c\/i\u003e and that of others. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAn essential collection from an essential writer, \u003ci\u003eThe Source of Self-Regard\u003c\/i\u003e shines with the literary elegance, intellectual prowess, spiritual depth, and moral compass that have made Toni Morrison our most cherished and enduring voice.","brand":"Toni Morrison","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53728401359061,"sku":"BS-I6J-562795","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0777\/7170\/2485\/files\/9780525562795-HD.jpg?v=1777485344"},{"product_id":"cat-pictures-please-and-other-stories","title":"Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003eAcclaimed writer Naomi Kritzer's marvelous tales of science fiction and fantasy are collected in Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories. Here are seventeen short stories, including her Hugo Award-winning story \"Cat Pictures Please,\" about what would happen if artificial intelligence was born out of our search engine history. Two stories are previously unpublished. Kritzer has a gift for telling tales both humorous and tender. Her stories are filled with both wit and intelligence, and require thoughtful reading.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Naomi Kritzer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53839770353877,"sku":"BS-I6J-846675","price":20.69,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0777\/7170\/2485\/files\/9781933846675-HD.jpg?v=1779297085"},{"product_id":"grimms-fairy-tales-collectors-edition-hardcover","title":"Grimm's Fairy Tales | Collector's Edition | Hardcover","description":"The Brothers Grimm rediscovered a host of fairy tales, telling of princes and princesses in their castles, witches in their towers and forests, of giants and dwarfs, of fabulous animals and dark deeds.\n\nThis selection of their folk tales was made and translated by Lucy Crane, and includes firm favourites such as Rapunzel, The Goose Girl, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Greteland Snow White. It is illustrated throughout by Walter Crane’s charming line drawings.","brand":"Marble City Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54180376379605,"sku":"9781840228571","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0777\/7170\/2485\/files\/893222d711e054dcf3697667d829c341a620430918a92e51d4878e642fe1ffd0.png?v=1783450721"},{"product_id":"dont-look-now-selected-stories-of-daphne-du-maurier","title":"Don't Look Now: Selected Stories of Daphne Du Maurier","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eClassic horror stories by one of masters of the form. Full of bone-chilling tales, this collection includes \"The Birds,\" the basis for the Alfred Hitchcock film of the same title, and other creepy classics. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDaphne du Maurier wrote some of the most compelling and creepy novels of the twentieth century. In books like \u003ci\u003eRebecca\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eMy Cousin Rachel\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eJamaica Inn \u003c\/i\u003eshe transformed the small dramas of everyday life--love, grief, jealousy--into the stuff of nightmares. Less known, though no less powerful, are her short stories, in which she gave free rein to her imagination in narratives of unflagging suspense.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePatrick McGrath's revelatory new selection of du Maurier's stories shows her at her most chilling and most psychologically astute: a dead child reappears in the alleyways of Venice; routine eye surgery reveals the beast within to a meek housewife; nature revolts against man's abuse by turning a benign species into an annihilating force; a dalliance with a beautiful stranger offers something more dangerous than a broken heart. McGrath draws on the whole of du Maurier's long career and includes surprising discoveries together with famous stories like \"The Birds.\" \u003ci\u003eDon't Look Now\u003c\/i\u003e is a perfect introduction to a peerless storyteller.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Daphne Du Maurier","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54445840728277,"sku":"BS-I6J-172889","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0777\/7170\/2485\/files\/9781590172889-HD.jpg?v=1786039590"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.acornbookshop.com\/collections\/short-stories-essays.oembed","provider":"Acorn Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}