Showing posts with label short stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short stories. Show all posts

Sunday, February 23, 2025


 The State of the Art by Iain M Banks (1991, ISBN 978-1-85723-030-7)

 This a collection of short stories.

Purchased 2022-10-14 from Amazon for $13.11

Thursday, May 15, 2014

squirrel seeks chipmunk by David Sedaris. 2010, ISBN 978-0-316-03839-3.
A collection of short stories. All of the characters are animals, playing human roles.
Purchased at Powells 2014-01-14 for $7.98.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

The Hastur Cycle, edited by Robert M. Price. 1993, ISBN 0-56882-009-7. Subtitle: 13 Tales of Horror Defining Hastur, the King in Yellow, Yuggoth, and the Dread City of Carcosa. This is a collection of short stories that are related because the involve the use of Hastur, Hali, Carcosa, the King in Yellow, etc. The stories are written by Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, Karl Edward Wagner, James Blish, Arthur Machen, H. P. Lovecraft, Richard A. Lupoff, Ramsey Campbell, James Wade, August Derleth, and Lin Carter. These stories were written from the late 1800's into the 1980's. In the introduction the editor describes this as a revised edition of Spawn of Cthulhu.This book was purchased on 9-9-2011 at Powell's books for $15.50.

Sunday, October 23, 2011


The Maker of Moons by Robert W. Chambers. 1896. This is a collection of short stories written by the American writer R. W. Chambers. The collection was published in the late nineteenth century. Most of the stories are romantic, but some are "weird". R. W. Chambers is considered to be one of the writers that influenced H. P. Lovecraft. This book was a PDF that I read using my Kindle. The type was a bit small, but the scan was clean. The scan was made by Google and obtained from books.google.com.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

The Survivor and Others by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. 1971, Ballantine Books. 02148-7-095. Book of short stories started or outlined by Lovecraft and completed by Derleth after Lovecraft died. I enjoyed these. They had all of the Lovecraft elements and were easy to read. Purchased from Pandora's Books (via Amazon marketplace) for 12.87 (including s&h) on June 26, 2010. Has another of those amazing covers (front and back) by Gervasio Gallardo.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. 1895. (the edition I read was published in 1902.) This is a collection of short stories. The stories are horror and fantastic in nature. Some take place in an imaginary future (is there any other kind of future?) Some of the stories have the characters reading and under the influence of a play called "The King in Yellow." Portions of this fictional play are quoted in the stories. This author was read by H. P. Lovecraft and some of the elements of the play are mentioned in his stories. The book I read was a PDF scan I downloaded from Google. I read it using the Kindle. This edition had several line drawings illustrating the stories.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, edited and with Introduction by S. T. Joshi.
This book contains four stories by H. P. Lovecraft, "The Rats In The Walls", "The Colour Out Of Space", "The Dunwich Horror", and "At The Mountains Of Madness". These were all good stories. The annotated part is mostly footnotes added to explain the more obscure words in the stories. The book also has a number of pictures showing various places where Lovecraft lived. I purchased this book used at Powells, $10.95.

Saturday, June 26, 2010


The Spawn of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft and others. 1971. Ballantine Books 02394-3-095 (SBN 345-02394-3-095). Edited by Lin Carter. This is a book of short stories which illustrates the development and growth of the "Cthulhu Mythos" stories. The other authors include Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, Vincent Starrett, August Derleth, Lin Carter, Robert E. Howard, Walter C. DeBill Jr., Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Zealia Bishop and J. Ramsey Campbell. This book was purchased in the early 1970s. I liked these stories for the most part, I might try to read them again sometime. I am also interested in reading more by the other authors (besides Lovecraft.) I have about a quarter of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. The cover art is fantastic, like the previous two books (Dream Quest and Doom) by Gervasio Gallardo.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

The Doom That Came To Sarnath by H. P. Lovecraft. 1971. Ballentine Books 02146-0-095 (SBN 345-02146-0-095.) Edited by Lin Carter. This collection of short stories is related to the "Dream Quest" collection. Some of these stories are dreams, others are horror and even science fiction. One story was co-authored with Harry Houdini. Like "dream Quest" I purchased and read this first in the early 1970s. The cover art is fantastic, probably the reason I bought the book. The story can be read here or here.

Thursday, June 3, 2010


The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft. Ballantine Books 01923-7-095, 1970 (SBN 345-01923-7-095). Edited by Lin Carter (assumed to be no relation to Randolph Carter!) Dream Quest is both the title of this collection of six stories and the title of the longest story. I think these stories are in the public domain, so you can probably find them for free (for example, here.) This book is a paperback that I purchased new in the early 1970s. It is a part of a series of books published by Ballantine Books, Adult Fantasy Series. This book has several of the stories from Lovecraft's Dream Cycle. These stories are related because they have some of the same characters or locations.

Monday, April 26, 2010

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Popular Library 445-00300-125. This is a book of short stories. The most famous is "The Lottery." I think I either saw a film version of this story or read it when I was in High School. It is quite shocking the first time you read it. Many of the other stories feature a character named Jim Harris (or something like that.) This is a reference to a popular English ballad "The Daemon Lover." Most of the stories are quite short, with a few being only two or three pages. Most have tricky, surprise endings. This book was purchased at Powell's a few years ago for 95 cents. It is a cheap paper back probably printed in the 1970s. The book "Night in Funland" also had a story by Shirley Jackson.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction by J. D. Salinger. ISBN 978-0316766944. Two short stories. The stories are about Buddy Glass and his brother Seymour Glass. The first story is about Buddy and some other people on the day that Seymour was to get married, but failed to show up at the altar. The second story appears to be an introduction to a book of poems by Seymour, an introduction written by Buddy.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. ISBN 0-316-76950-9. I enjoyed reading this book. It was easy to read. The stories contain a lot of conversation and smoking! Too bad all of his stories are not available in book form, maybe someday.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Franny and Zooey by J. D. Sallinger. ISBN 0316769495. This book contains two stories, actually two episodes of one story. There isn't much action, it is mostly just conversations.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Night In Funland And Other Stories From Literary Cavalcade, edited by Jerome Brondfield. TK1056. This is a collection of short stories published by Scholastic Book Services in 1968. I first read this book in high school sometime around 1970. The story Night In Funland is by William Peden. He also has a book of short stories called Night In Funland. I found this book in a used book store about 20 years ago. The stories are mostly written in the 1950's but there are a few from the 30's, 40's and 60's. Contains 13 easy to read stories, including Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes and One Ordinary Day with Peanuts by Shirley Jackson.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008


"The Stories and Fables of Ambrose Bierce" by Ambrose Bierce. ISBN 0-916144-20-8. My main reason for reading this was a memory of a film of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". It was a short black and white film. Many of the stories have military (civil war) related scenes. The Fables are mostly very short little bits that are supposed to be funny.