|summary=This book is as slim as one of Rumpole's beloved packets of cigars and it can also be read in the time it takes an average turkey to cook in the oven on Christmas Day. A handful of festive, short stories is covered in this book with its appealing front cover. Most of the stories have been previously published elsewhere, mainly in 'The Strand Magazine' but also in some of the national newspapers.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039779</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Raymond Carver
|title=Beginners
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary= One thing you soon surmise from reading Raymond Carver is that he was an alcoholic. Carver's characters tend to drink excessively, and his stories often examine the negative impact of drinking on his central character's relationships. But nowadays, what we talk about when we talk about Carver is the role of his editor, Gordon Lish.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540320</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Colm Toibin
|title=The Empty Family
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=In his first book since the pitch-perfect [[Brooklyn by Colm Toibin|Brooklyn]], Colm Toibin once more examines the great Irish theme of exile and homecoming in his new collection of short stories, 'The Empty Family'. As the title suggests, many of the stories also revolve around family relationships, and their sweet and sour Nature.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918172</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kurt Vonnegut
|title=Look at the Birdie
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Kurt Vonnegut died a couple of years ago after a sci fi writing career spanning
over fifty years; he was well-known for his humanist views. This collection of
unpublished short stories shows Vonnegut at his dark best, his theme,
individuals out for themselves in an uncaring society. A colleague at The
Bookbag [[Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut|recently wrote]] that Kurt Vonnegut's early writing is his strongest. If that is so, then this collection, illustrated with cartoons by the author, will be good news for his many fans.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548852</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ryunosuke Akutagawa
|title=The Beautiful and the Grotesque
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=The author, the tongue-twisting Akutagawa is 'hailed as one of the greatest short story writers in world literature' says the back book cover. I was truly impressed and very keen to get reading. The front cover is both eye-catching and colourful, there's no doubt that this book is about Japan. There is a comprehensive Introduction with its lovely title ''A Sprig Of Wild Orange'' written by the translator. And straight away I got a strong sense of his enthusiasm for the short stories to follow. It is a good lead-in as it informs the reader of the gulf which exists between Western and Japanese values (a gulf as big as it gets, apparently) and of the conservative nature of the Japanese people.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0871401924</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lydia Davis
|title=The Collected Short Stories of Lydia Davis
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=As you might expect with short stories, the themes are as varied as 'The Fears of Mrs Orlando' to 'Mothers' and of course, I have my own particular favourites. Most of these short stories cover a couple of pages, but others are merely a sentence or two. And, for me, the less on the page, the more impart the words usually have. In short (no pun intended) there would seem to be something for everyone in these 700+ pages.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>024114504X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kelly Link
|title=Pretty Monsters
|rating=3
|genre=Fantasy
|summary=It goes without saying, but the greatest thing about fantasy fiction is that one can go anywhere with it, and do anything. So a young man can easily try and dig his girlfriend up and retrieve some poetry he romantically left with her - only to have a hairy evening as a result. There can be a psychic link between a young lad, called Onion and doomed to die in a terrorist attack, and his cousin while she works as slave in an odd community of wizards. Several worlds can be accessed through an elderly woman's handbag, for better or worse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847677843</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=A L Kennedy
|title=What Becomes
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=You're three stories into this collection and two people have cut their hands open preparing food - a man with love drooping away from his marriage, making soup, and another, a greengrocer, preparing stock and thinking about his own relationship. But there is no pattern to that. Four stories in and there have been two bursts of non-sequitur comedy. Why your fruit might be ruined by stray fingers, and the thoughts of a woman in a flotation tank, remembering Doctor Who, locked parental doors - and the urban myths of gerbils. But there's still no pattern - and that's the point of these combined stories. Life and all of its emotions does not live to rule.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009949406X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tove Jansson
|title=Travelling Light
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In her home country of Finland – and no doubt throughout much of the rest of Europe which is not quite so sniffy about foreign literature as Britain tends to be – Jansson is generally recognised as an author of talent, skill, verve and wit that extended far beyond the Moomin Troll stories for which she is best known in this country. Those children's books were first published in England sixty years ago and have remained in print ever since (as well as being adapted for just about every other medium going), and a joy they are too, but it is only recently that we have been granted the pleasures of reading her fiction for adults.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095489958X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Grisham
|title=Ford County
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=When I think of John Grisham I tend to think firstly of lawyers. Well, actually, I think of Tom Cruise first to be honest, and then the whole lawyer thing. I expect surprising twists and long, detailed plots. This collection, however, is a book of short stories so has to work differently. There isn't room within a short story for a lengthy, twisting plot, and so Grisham has to rely on other skills to make them work. My feeling was that some do and some don't. Set in America's Deep South all the stories revolve around a rather mixed bag of characters from Ford County, with the ever-present lawyers but also gamblers, murderers, con artists, drunks and scoundrels.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099545780</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=John Harvey
|title=A Darker Shade of Blue
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=There are eighteen short stories covering the East Midlands, those parts of London you'd generally really rather avoid and rural East Anglia. You'll see broken families, revenge killings, prostitution and drugs. There's corruption – not unusual when you have an overstretched police force and underpaid men and women staffing it. And then there are the people who, in spite of everything, fight for justice.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548232</amazonuk>
}}