 | Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (Penguin Modern Classics) by Jorge Borges
Buy new: £6.48 / Used from: £4.20 One of the masters of the short story. A great place to start.
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 | The Complete Short Stories: v. 1 by J.G. Ballard
Buy new: £8.58 / Used from: £7.99 Another master. Not a boring sentence in over 700 pages.
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 | The Complete Short Stories: v. 2 by J.G. Ballard
Buy new: £8.59 / Used from: £8.00 And another 700 pages; still not dull, even for a second.
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 | The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Modern Classics) by Fernando Pessoa
Buy new: £7.92 / Used from: £5.34 Not short stories as such, but the entire book can be read in random order, on and off as desired.
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 | The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
Buy new: £10.47 / Used from: £5.75 Nothing like the children's books, but a fantastic collection.
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 | Guys and Dolls: and Other Stories by Damon Runyon
Buy new: £5.97 / Used from: £3.69 Another guy incapable of writing a bad sentence. One of the most consistently entertaining writers I've ever read.
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 | Collected Short Stories: Volume 1 by William Somerset Maugham
Buy new: £7.67 / Used from: £4.99 Absolutely incredible. Get the other 6 volumes as well!
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 | The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Penguin Classics) by Edgar Allan Poe
Buy new: £11.38 / Used from: £9.49 A more obvious and popular master - and deservedly so.
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 | The Call of Cthulhu: And Other Weird Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) by H P Lovecraft
Buy new: £7.12 / Used from: £4.60 More horror, but much, much weirder.
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 | Beyond Lies The Wub: Volume One Of The Collected Stories: The Collected Short Stories 1 (Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick) by Philip K. Dick
Buy new: £5.97 / Used from: £0.36 Some great writing - as with Ballard, Science Fiction that goes beyond mere technology. There are another 3 collections in the series.
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 | Arabian Nights: Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (Thousand Nights & One Night)
Buy new: £14.94 / Used from: £7.95 The first of four volumes of 1001 short stories woven into a whole.
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 | The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (Penguin Classics) by Jan Potocki
Buy new: £8.42 / Used from: £5.17 As above, but shorter, in one volume, and more occultish and in some ways weirder.
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 | Saki, The Complete Short Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) by H. Munro
Buy new: £7.13 / Used from: £4.25 Satirical, genuinely funny, witty, intelligent work.
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 | Don't Look Now and Other Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) by Daphne Du Maurier
Buy new: £5.94 / Used from: £3.43 Including Don't Look Now, on which the Donald Sutherland/Julie Christie film was based.
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 | The Birds and Other Stories (Virago Modern Classics) by Daphne Du Maurier
Buy new: £5.97 / Used from: £1.08 Including The Birds, upon which the Hitchcock film was based. A fantastically diverse and accomplished writer.
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 | Where I'm Calling from: Selected Stories by Raymond Carver
Buy new: £9.07 / Used from: £5.72 Altman based the film Short Cuts on Carver's work. The 1960s Burt Lancaster film The Swimmer was also inspired by Carver.
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 | The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
Buy new: £5.57 / Used from: £2.79 Great work, weirdly undervalued compared to his novels, which are often extensions of his short stories.
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 | Dubliners (Penguin Modern Classics) by Joyce James
Buy new: £4.78 / Used from: £0.01 Beautiful work, much easier to read than Ulysses!
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 | Night Shift by Stephen King
Buy new: £7.99 / Used from: £0.01 One of the greatest writers of the 20th century, if not of all time. This and the follow up below show why - succintly.
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 | Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King
Buy new: £7.19 / Used from: £0.01 More genuis short stories, for those who don't have time for one of the much longer books.
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 | Books of Blood Omnibus: v. 1 by Clive Barker
Buy new: £7.67 / Used from: £0.17 One of the greatest short story collections ever. Highly recommended even for non horror fans (those with a strongish stomach).
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 | Books of Blood: Volumes 4-6 by Clive Barker
Buy new: £6.69 / Used from: £1.69 Work so good, both volumes need highlighting.
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 | About Love and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics) by Anton Chekhov
Buy new: £7.19 / Used from: £1.73 Another classic master.
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 | The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce by Ambrose Bierce
Buy new: £10.84 / Used from: £10.72 Some very weird stuff, by the author of The Devil's Dictionary.
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 | The Decameron (Penguin Classics) by Giovanni Boccaccio
Buy new: £7.77 / Used from: £4.00 More short stories jammed together to make one giant one.
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