The book could count as borderline-creepy but not really scary, and it is short enough for a quiet night in. A surreal, ...

Good morning and welcome back to the L.A. Times Book Club newsletter. I’m Jim Ruland, a fiction writer, punk historian and a longtime contributor to the Los Angeles Times, and this summer I’ll be ...

I don't like reviewing short story collections. Until recently, I thought that was because I preferred my fiction a little longer — I read far more novels than short story collections and have far ...

The best part about being in a book club is getting to spend an afternoon drinking coffee and talking for hours about your new favorite book. The worst part about a book club (if there is such a thing ...

Short books are a wonderful way to build a child’s reading habit. One of the most important habits that kids can inculcate ...

In 2021, Gini Alhadeff, author and translator, brought a new concept to the venerable publisher New Directions. What if, she proposed, New Directions published short books—novellas or long stories—as ...

At its best, Joy Williams’s “The Pelican Child” is delightfully unhinged; at its worst, willfully weird and repetitive.

A Love Story from the End of the World may take its title from the final of 10 short stories bundled inside, but it also ...

The short story, like the western, is periodically said to be on the brink of a comeback. The most recent example of this boosterism: an article by the New York Times’ new(ish) publishing reporter, ...