Today I feature three books of short stories that I plan to be reading from in the next few months. All of them are from my husband's shelves, and he has not read them yet either.
Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich
This collection of 14 previously uncollected stories was published in 2004. The reviews at both Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus said these are not his best stories, but there were good reviews at Goodreads, so I am sure the stories will be worth my time. Edited and with an Introduction by Francis M. Nevins.
Killer, Come Back to Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury
As noted in the subtitle, this book collects crime stories by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury wrote three crime novels in 1985, 1990, and 2002, but most of his short stories were in other genres. About half of the stories in this book are from the 1940s, and the others are from later decades. This book has a very nice cover and includes illustrations preceding some of the stories.
There is an introduction by Jonathan R. Eller. At the end, there is an essay by Ray Bradbury that was intended to be an introduction to A Memory of Murder, a collection of crime stories published in 1984. This seems appropriate since a good number of stories that were in A Memory of Murder are in this book.
Speculative Los Angeles
Edited by Denise Hamilton
Fourteen speculative short stories set in neighborhoods around Los Angeles. The stories are divided into four sections: "Changelings, Ghosts, and Parallel Worlds," "Steampunks, Alchemists, and Memory Artists," "A Tear in the Fabric of Reality" and "Cops and Robots in the Future Ruins of LA." Denise Hamilton was also the editor for Los Angeles Noir and Los Angeles Noir Volume 2: The Classics published by Akashic.
This is reportedly the first book in a new series of speculative fiction anthologies from Akashic Books.
