Favorite short stories
Since my story "Cruelty the Human Heart" (first published in Argosy II magazine, 2004) ) was included in the college composition textbook WORD AND IMAGE (Pearson Learning Solutions, Boston, MA) the occasional college student will contact me about it and other topics. The other day, I was asked to name my favorite classic short story. I said there were too many to have a favorite but I mentioned Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."
"That's old English. What about current English?"
That cracked me up. I gave the student a short list and moved one. The question lingered and I thought about it, went to my bookcase and brought down a few collections and one story hit me (again), and I re-read it as slowly as I could, to experience the well-written tale and feel the same charge with the opening lines and the same emotion at the end.
The story – “The Tonto Woman” by Elmore Leonard, one of his western tales.
Here are others:
“One” by George Alec Effinger
“Shambleau” by C. L. Moore (Catherine Moore)
"The Whimper of Whipped Dogs" by Harlan Ellison
“I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison
“The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl” by Ray Bradbury
“The Saliva Tree” by Brian W. Aldiss
“A Martian Odyssey” by Stanley G. Weinbaum
“The Doors of His Face; The Lamps of His Mouth” by Roger Zelazny
“Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov
“Cat’s Paw” by Bill Pronzini
“The Perfect Crime” by Max Allan Collins
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce
“The Call of Cthulhu” by H. P. Lovecraft
“A Scandal in Bohemia” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes
“The Wall” by Marcia Muller
“Crazy Horse” by Cornell Woolrich
“The Dog of Pompeii” by Louis Untermeyer
I have to stop for the moment. There are too many favorites.
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