The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #353 -- Favorite Short Story Collections

Since you're so vocal about your support and love for short stories, what are you favorite short story collections?

I'll play along, but to do this right I'll have to break it into genres. Sound fair?

Science Fiction:

 

 



Horror: 







Fantasy:






Mystery/Crime:



 

 

Literary:



 

 

 

Favorite Holiday Tales (A Festive Writers Roundtable)

No big fancy topic this week. Just one simple question for everyone to answer. So, here it goes...

What's your favorite holiday story and why?

Mark Holmes: "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" by Conan Doyle. Holmes and Watson follow a clue of a lost hat and a goose to free a wrongly accused plumber of theft. In the spirit of the season Holmes lets the real pathetic thief go. A fun story that has Christmas as it's setting and gives us a glance at a Victorian celebration. The story takes place on "the seventh day of Christmas" The 12 days of Christmas are after Dec. 25th. Something we all have forgotten.

Ellie Raine: Hogfather because of its punny goodness.

Jeff Hewitt: I have to second Hogfather for all the reasons that make it so good, and all those reasons are the book itself. Amazing stuff in there. But especially Death's speech at the end. "Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape."

Marian Allen: Anything by Connie Willis. She writes WONDERFUL Christmas stories!

Stu Thaman: I like to read Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" around Christmas. It is..... uplifting? I don't know why.

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: The Hogfather by Sir Terry Pratchett

Katina French: Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's quite possibly the earliest example of "urban fantasy" (there are ghosts & spirits, and it's set in the author's contemporary London).