Best Short Stories

Josh Silver

'Fruit Fly is savage and darkly hilarious. A pointed satire of publishing with flawed, fascinating characters.' Juno Dawson 'This is an incredible book ... tough and raw and merciless but funny and kind at the same time.' Russell T. Davies, writer of It's a Sin Anyone can write a bestseller. Here's how. GO GAY It's been seven years since Mallory shot to fame as a literary sensa...

Josh Silver

'This is an incredible book ... tough and raw and merciless but funny and kind at the same time.' Russell T. Davies, writer of It's a Sin A BBC must-read book of 2026 - 'Sharp, dark and humorous, it's a real nailbiter.' Anyone can write a bestseller. Here's how. GO GAY It's been seven years since Mallory shot to fame as a literary sensation. But after years of struggling with w...

Marcus Kliewer

Follow the Rites... Nothing less than the survival of humanity is at stake. From Marcus Kliewer, a new 'titan of the macabre and unsettling' (Erin A. Craig, #1 New York Times bestselling author), comes a supernatural horror about a young woman who accepts a caretaking job from Craigslist, only to discover the position has consequences far greater--and more dangerous--than she...

Katie Kitamura

**LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025** A GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT and NEW STATESMAN Book of the Year 'Slick, sharp, strange and singular . . . You'll gulp this novel down in one in-breath' SAMANTHA HARVEY, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital 'A lightning bolt of a novel' FINANCIAL TIMES 'I'm not sure there's anyone be...

Susana Monsó

How animals conceive of death and dying—and what it can teach us about our own relationships with mortalityWhen the opossum feels threatened, she becomes paralyzed. Her body temperature plummets, her breathing and heart rates drop to a minimum, and her glands simulate the smell of a putrefying corpse. Playing Possum explores what the opossum and other creatures can teach us abo...

Mónica Ojeda

The ear is the organ of fear. It is a door to that which is not of this world. Leaving behind the dread and decay of the city, Noa and her best friend, Nicole, travel up into the Andes, headed for Solar Noise: an eight-day festival that takes place in the infinite expanse of the páramo. Nestled on the side of a volcano, it is a world of mysticism, shamanism and underground m...

Guy De Maupassant

b'It was raining as it only rains in Normandy, as though great gouts of water were being sprayed by some angry, giant hand.'/b Maupassant believed that we delude ourselves into believing that we are not animals acting upon instinct but rational creatures capable of idealistic beliefs and actions and survive only on the drug of self-deception. Maupassant's disgust with creation ...

Guy De Maupassant

Often described as the father of the modern short story, there is perhaps no other writer more closely associated with the form than Guy de Maupassant. Included here is his most famous story, 'Boule de Suif', as well as tales of love, such as the brilliant 'Happiness', and the supernatural, like the chilling 'The Horla'. ...

Guy De Maupassant

A selection of Maupassant's brilliant, glittering stories set in the Parisian beau monde and Normandy countryside. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian Lo...