Recommendations based on Selected Storiesby Alice Munro

* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans

  1. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories

    by Alice Munro
    Interconnected stories exploring the complexities of love, relationships, and family.

    In the her tenth collection (the title story of which is the basis for the new film Hateship Loveship ), Alice Munro achieves new heights, creating narratives that loop and swerve like memory, and ... (Goodreads)

  2. Runaway: Stories

    by Alice Munro
    A collection of short stories exploring the complexities of human relationships and the struggles of women in rural Canada.

    The incomparable Alice Munro’s bestselling and rapturously acclaimed Runaway is a book of extraordinary stories about love and its infinite betrayals and surprises, from the title story about a young ... (Goodreads)

  3. Dear Life

    by Alice Munro
    A collection of stories of ordinary people facing extraordinary moments of change and transformation.

    Suffused with Munro's clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, these tales about departures and beginnings, accidents and dangers, and outgoings and homecomings both imagined and ... (Goodreads)

  4. St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

    by Karen Russell
    Magical realism tale of young girls raised by wolves, learning to become human in a strange new world.

    In these ten glittering short stories, debut author Karen Russell takes us to the ghostly and magical swamps of the Florida Everglades. Here, wolf-like girls are reformed by nuns; a family makes its ... (Goodreads)

  5. Bastard Out of Carolina

    by Dorothy Allison
    A young girl's coming of age amidst poverty, abuse, and a broken family.

    The book opens with Bone relating the details of her birth. Bone's 15-year-old mother Anney gives birth to her after being seriously injured in a car accident. Anney, who is comatose during the ... (Wikipedia)

  6. The Savage Detectives

    by Roberto Bolaño
    A poetic journey of two young poets searching for a mysterious figure through Latin America.

    The novel is narrated in first person by several narrators and divided into three parts. The first section , "Mexicans Lost in Mexico", set in late 1975, is told by 17-year-old aspiring poet, Juan ... (Wikipedia)

  7. Interpreter of Maladies

    by Jhumpa Lahiri
    Collection of stories exploring the struggles of Indian-American immigrants in the US.

    A married couple, Shukumar and Shoba, live as strangers in their house until an electrical outage brings them together when all of sudden "they [are] able to talk to each other again" in the four ... (Wikipedia)

  8. The Corrections

    by Jonathan Franzen
    A family drama exploring the complexities of relationships, aging and life’s choices.

    The novel shifts back and forth through the late 20th century, intermittently following spouses Alfred and Enid Lambert as they raise their children Gary, Chip, and Denise in the traditional ... (Wikipedia)

  9. And the Mountains Echoed

    by Khaled Hosseini
    Interconnected stories of family and love, tracing the consequences of decisions made throughout life.

    The novel opens in the year 1952. Saboor, an impoverished farmer from the fictional village of Shadbagh, decides to sell his three-year-old daughter Pari to a wealthy, childless couple in Kabul. ... (Wikipedia)

  10. Fall on Your Knees

    by Ann-Marie MacDonald
    A multi-generational saga of secrets, tragedy, and resilience in a family of sisters.

    At the start of the 20th century, James Piper sets fire to his dead mother’s piano and heads out across Cape Breton Island to find a new place to live. Working as a piano tuner, he meets and ... (Wikipedia)

  11. As I Lay Dying

    by William Faulkner
    A family's struggle to fulfill the dying wish of their mother, amidst personal and societal challenges.

    The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her poor, rural family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish ... (Wikipedia)

  12. Crush

    by Richard Siken
    A lyrical exploration of love and loneliness, weaving together vivid imagery and intense emotion.

    Finalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry—an erotic, powerful collection “One of the best books of contemporary poetry.”—Victoria Chang,, Huffington Post, “Vital, immediate, ... (Barnes & Noble)

  13. Beowulf

    by Unknown
    Epic poem recounting the heroic deeds of a legendary Scandinavian warrior.

    Beowulf is a major epic of Anglo-Saxon literature, probably composed between the first half of the seventh century and the end of the first millennium. The poem was inspired by Germanic and ... (Goodreads)

  14. The Lottery and Other Stories

    by Shirley Jackson
    A collection of short stories exploring the dark side of human nature and society's norms.

    The Lottery , one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker . "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical ... (Goodreads)

  15. Steel Magnolias

    by Robert Harling
    A group of Southern women bond and support each other through life's joys and tragedies.

    Presents the script of a 1988 play about a group of women in Chinquapin, Louisiana, who learn to draw upon their underlying strength and love to meet the challenges of life. ... (Goodreads)

  16. Stoner

    by John Williams
    An academic's life of quiet desperation, finding solace in literature.

    William Stoner is born on a small farm in 1891. After high school, the county agent advises he go to agriculture school. Stoner enrolls in the University of Missouri , where all agriculture students ... (Wikipedia)

  17. Waiting for the Barbarians

    by J.M. Coetzee
    A magistrate's moral crisis when faced with the abuse of power by the oppressive Empire.

    The story is narrated in the first person by the unnamed magistrate of a settlement that exists on the territorial frontier of "The Empire". The Magistrate's rather peaceful existence comes to an end ... (Wikipedia)

  18. The Complete Stories

    by Flannery O'Connor
    A collection of stories that explore aspects of the human condition through surreal and darkly comedic lenses.

    This is the original cover edition of, ISBN: 0374515360, (ISBN13: 9780374515362 Winner of the National Book Award The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's ... (Goodreads)

  19. Alias Grace

    by Margaret Atwood
    A psychological thriller that examines the true story of a 19th century Canadian murderess.

    Grace Marks, the convicted murderess, has been hired out from prison to serve as a domestic servant in the home of the Governor of the penitentiary. A Committee of gentlemen and ladies from the ... (Wikipedia)

  20. The Complete Stories

    by Franz Kafka
    A collection of Kafka's surreal and haunting short stories, exploring the human condition and the absurdity of existence.

    The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max ... (Goodreads)

  21. Birds of America

    by Lorrie Moore
    A collection of comedic stories depicting everyday life with a unique, wry sense of humor.

    A long-awaited collection of stories–twelve in all--by one of the most exciting writers at work today, the acclaimed author of Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and Self-Help. Stories remarkable in ... (Goodreads)

  22. Amy and Isabelle

    by Elizabeth Strout
    A mother-daughter relationship is tested when a scandal rocks their small New England town.

    Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth Strout’s bestselling and award winning debut, Amy and Isabelle—adapted for television by Oprah Winfrey— evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant ... (Goodreads)

  23. The Secret History

    by Donna Tartt
    A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.

    Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)

  24. Pastoralia

    by George Saunders
    Short stories exploring the complexities of modern life, through characters struggling to survive in an ever-changing world.

    With this new collection, George Saunders takes us even further into the shocking, uproarious and oddly familiar landscape of his imagination. The stories in Pastoralia are set in a slightly skewed ... (Goodreads)

  25. The White Tiger

    by Aravind Adiga
    An exploration of the Indian class system, told from the perspective of a lower-caste man.

    The entire novel is narrated through letters by Balram Halwai to the Premier of China, who will soon be visiting India. Balram is an Indian man from an impoverished background, born in the village of ... (Wikipedia)

  26. So Long, See You Tomorrow

    by William Maxwell
    A tale of friendship, betrayal, and regret set in rural Illinois during the 1920s.

    On an Illinois farm in the 1920s, a man is murdered, and in the same moment the tenuous friendship between two lonely boys comes to an end. In telling their interconnected stories, American Book ... (Goodreads)

  27. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

    by Angela Carter
    A collection of subversive, darkly fantastical tales exploring the power of femininity.

    Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural ... (Goodreads)

  28. Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

    by Anton Chekhov
    A collection of short stories depicting the lives of ordinary people in Russia.

    Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the highly acclaimed translators of War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago, and Anna Karenina, which was an Oprah Book Club pick and million-copy bestseller, bring ... (Goodreads)

  29. The New York Trilogy

    by Paul Auster
    A series of interconnected stories exploring the hidden mysteries of New York City.

    A 2006 reissue by Penguin Books is fronted by new pulp magazine -style covers by comic book illustrator Art Spiegelman . The first story, City of Glass , features an author of detective fiction who ... (Wikipedia)

  30. Disgrace

    by J.M. Coetzee
    A professor's fall from grace in post-apartheid South Africa, reckoning with the consequences of his actions.

    David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own ... (Wikipedia)