Short Stories from Vintage

In “Come Out the Wilderness,” an essential and tremendous classic of American literature, James Baldwin unmasks the heartbreak of one African American woman’s spiritual, sexual, moral, and ultimately futile struggle for control of her future and her happiness in mid-century New York.

The solution came to the writer one evening: she should have an office. From Nobel Laureate Alice Munro, a brilliantly executed and revelatory story in which simply finding a place to write turns out to be the hardest act of all.

Pranab Chakraborty was a fellow Bengali from Calcutta who had washed up on the shores of Central Square. Soon he was one of the family. From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, a staggeringly beautiful and precise story about a Bengali family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the impossibilities of love, and the unanticipated pleasures and complications of life in America.

On the day a plane crashed in Nigeria, Ukamaka lets into her apartment a neighbor in a Princeton sweatshirt she’d never met before to keep her company and pray. In this poignant, stirring short depicting the solitary lives that immigrants face in the United States, acclaimed author of Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie celebrates faith and the fragile ties that can grant salvation.

This selection of poems by Leonard Cohen, one of the most acclaimed singer-songwriters in the world, is accompanied by twenty-four of his striking and provocative drawings. With its lyrical intensity and sensual immediacy, Fifteen Poems offers a potent distillation of the genre-crossing genius of one of the most admired artists of our time.

In this warm, intelligently observed novella, Isabel Dalhousie, Alexander McCall Smith’s wonderful heroine, learns valuable lessons about inviting the past (and everyone in it) back into your life.

Susanna has an incredible gift: she can heal ailments with just the touch of her hand.  People travel from far and wide based on their faith in her abilities. But Susanna’s power only works in certain cases—it’s a semi-miracle. With the balm of time, and the wisdom of experience, Susanna must learn to live with the mysterious nature of her miracle.

From one of the most dazzling voices in contemporary literature, “Peep Show” is a funny, surprising, surreal story of sexual longing and the deeper shadows of desire. In the peep show, you never know who’s behind the curtain. A selection from the acclaimed volume What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Dave Eggers displays his emotional range in this quiet tour-de-force from How We Are Hungry, the often funny and masterful collection of short fiction. After giving up responsibility, in her usual passive way, of much that has been of importance in her life—her adopted children, a condo, financial security—Rita pays for a guided hike to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Philosopher and amateur sleuth Isabel Dalhousie has an unstinting commitment to her principles. Beautifully perceptive and witty, this original short story by Alexander McCall Smith shows Isabel calling upon all of her intelligence, charm, and tact.

In this personal, eloquently-argued essay—adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman now—and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.