It's very much of the '90s, but "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" by Melissa Bank is very good.

A newer author, Mary Laura Philpott, writes good essays that I think you would like. Laurie Colwin, Anne Lamott.

Stephen King has a few collections of short stories that are great.

Jhumpa Lahiri has two short story collections that are masterful.

Is it possible that you’d enjoy non fiction more than you like fiction?

Anonymous wrote:They have The Best American Short stories for each year in this anthology. This is how I was introduced to Roxane Gay and some of my other favorite authors.

https://www.amazon.com/Best-American-Short-Stories-2022-ebook/dp/B09SHSFDNW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

YES! I am in a short story book group and we're working our way through this volume now. Also check out Coolest American Short Stories. Lots of hidden gems.

I really enjoyed Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw.

You should read Michel de Montaigne's essays on life. Brilliant. (written in 1580)

If you like classics, try O. Henry and Mark Twain.

James Herriot wrote short stories about a British country vet.

Foundation by Asimov is a set of related short stories if you like Sci-Fi.

If you want more creepy stories like Poe, there used to be a lot of Alfred Hitchcock Anthologies. While they’re now out of print, you can still get them used gor reasonable prices, and your local library might even have some. Here’s a sample from Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-Anthologies-Alfred-Hitchcock/s?rh=n%3A10300%2Cp_lbr_one_browse-bin%3AAlfred+Hitchcock

Anonymous wrote:First things first...

What genres do you enjoy?
What genres do you not enjoy?
Are there any topics/tropes that are off-limits?

This thread will be useless without some more information.

Alternatively, it could be a thread of people recommending their favorite short story writers and collections and people can just pick and choose as makes sense. Just recommend stuff you like and you can mention the genre or provide a description (i.e. "this is speculative fiction which I adore, plus robots and re-imagined fairy tales are appealing to me").

The nice thing about short fiction is that it's less of a commitment, so I tend to read a much broader variety of genre and styles in short fiction than I might in novels. I also like that you have the option of reading an entire collection at once or just dipping in as you want, between reading other things. I got really into flash fiction a few years ago and I loved having a book of flash in my purse and being able to pull it out whenever and read a story in 2-3 minutes. Some of them were bad but it didn't matter. It gave me something to do that wasn't staring at my phone, and even the bad ones sometimes prompted interested thinking.

Just recommend what you like and let peopel figure out for themselves it it sounds good to them.