The best short story collections and anthologies from Next Chapter [March 2023]
The short story collection, also known as an anthology, is a genre of literature that features a series of short stories. These collections often have a common theme or genre, and the stories are curated by an editor or a team of editors. The anthology format allows for a diverse range of voices and styles to be included in one volume, providing readers with a varied and engaging reading experience.
Short story collections can be found in a variety of genres, including horror, science fiction, romance, and literary fiction. They are a popular form of reading for many, as they offer a quick yet satisfying literary experience. The bite-sized nature of short stories also allows readers to easily consume a few stories in one sitting, making them perfect for busy individuals who may not have the time to sit down and read a full-length novel.
One of the advantages of short story collections is that they offer readers the opportunity to discover new authors and explore different writing styles. As each story is self-contained, readers can pick and choose which stories to read and in what order, making the collection more customizable to individual reading preferences. Overall, short story collections are a wonderful way to experience a variety of voices and styles in one compact volume.
Here, we’ve collected six of our best short story collection book releases as of 03/2023, available from all major booksellers in eBook, paperback and hardcover (and some in audio as well). Even if you’re pressed for time, one of the books here will be a good choice!
If you enjoy one of the books on this page, please don’t forget to leave the author a review :) Don’t agree with our choices? Please leave a comment and let us know which book is your favorite in the genre!
Books featured on this page
Led By Beasts (Led By Beasts Book 1) by Clark Roberts
Murder In The Midst by Sandi Wallace
Book excerpt
A rifle shot split the sky as Chris Olden moved into the shade of the verandah. It was distant, and she barely noted it, concentrating on hauling open the front door.
She called out ‘Hiya’ in a general greeting and took a stool at the bar. ‘Pot of Carlton. Ta, Dougie.’
The barman surveyed her as he pulled the beer. ‘Hard day?’
‘You could say that.’ She paid, then raised her glass. ‘Cheers.’
He nodded, flashed her a smile missing an eyetooth, and went off to rearrange the fridge.
Chris swallowed a mouthful and waited, hoping for a miracle burst of energy. She lost herself for a while, watching a pool game between two regulars.
She’d gone through school with these guys before their paths forked – uni for her, and stage one of succession plans for their family farms for them. They clunked balls in pockets giving cries that inflated their success, and bantered with Dougie’s wife, Maura. But Chris saw chinks in their jollity – the regretful stretching out of a single beer, the wounded pride if someone offered a round because they couldn’t return the favour.
Chris lifted her glass. Empty. She wasn’t supposed to drink, but bought a second while a song about dusty gravel roads and leaving the past behind played in the background. She wondered whether moving forward was all it was cracked up to be. What if it turned out that her best years were in the past?
She took a gulp of her fresh beer, tasting sour hops and lost hope. Bloody country music; it did it to her every time.
A little low and keen not to show it, she took her pot out to the inaptly named beer garden. It was just an open space defined by an uncovered pergola lined with long tables and benches, their timber planks warped and split from numerous summers that set new annual records for the hottest and driest.
Nobody else was as stupid as Chris to sit out there in the blazing heat, swearing when the bare skin on the back of her thighs touched the timber. It suited her okay. One-quarter indigenous, her skin didn’t burn, merely changed shades of brown, and she had things to think about without stopping to chat. Stuff her boss had said today to ponder.
Like maybe she’d be better off packing it in. Give up the fight to save the Gazette. Abandon Glory Valley – yep, this place was as incongruously named as Maura and Dougie’s beer garden. The town shrinking and splintering, too.
The crack of a rifle went again, twice. The shots were still ricocheting off the craggy rocks on Hope Mountain when a third came. Chris shrugged. The sound had become more common in the past twelve months. Too many people around here were broke and hungry, and they supplemented what they could barter by butchering the stock they couldn’t afford to feed and water, along with whatever game they could shoot.
A flush heated her face, nothing to do with temperature, but all to do with shame. Here she was, contemplating the easier road. Leaving her old family home and becoming a townie. If she went, so would the paper – one of the last bastions of the glory days in Glory Valley. For a while, an overworked journo writing for the Featherton Courier would share their news. A paragraph or two in the regional paper. It might even be her; her editor had offered it. But before long, the paper would drop all pretence of interest in the unsophisticated blip of a town.
Chris had another thought. In a different place, would she wither or prosper? She suspected it’d go badly.
She took a slug and gagged on hot beer. She tipped out the rest and carried her glass inside. Left it on the counter and called out a general ‘See ya.’
By the time she’d reached her ute, she was dragging her legs, craving a power nap behind the wheel. No chance with the air-con on the blink and the cabin twenty degrees hotter than the unstirring air outside. She cranked down the windows on both sides, then started up the engine. Movement would create a breeze. Might even wake her up.
Led By Beasts (Led By Beasts Book 1) by Clark Roberts
Book excerpt
Dog, look at this.”
Mark ambled over to his older brother, inwardly admitting the outdoors was doing Eddie some good but, then again, thinking he didn’t really give a shit what the outdoors was doing for Eddie.
Eddie extended out an arm.
Mark glanced and saw just another tannish-brown morel or a goldie mushroom as Eddie called them, not any different than the dozen or so they’d already plucked and dropped into their mesh onion bags. Mark said, “Yeah, so?”
“Look closer, dog.”
Mark cringed at his brother calling him dog as if they were both still Generation-X teenagers rather than middle-aged men. He bit his tongue, reminding himself that over the years, Eddie had probably pickled his brain with so much booze and dope he most likely still viewed the world with the myopic lenses of a marginalized teen. Mark inspected closer, hunched his shoulders, admitting defeat.
“Dog, don’t even try telling me you don’t see this. Look there.” Eddie traced over the rippled honey-combed spores of the fruiting fungus. “Right there, man. It’s a face. It’s my face!”
Okay, there was no denying he now saw it. The formation did resemble a face, his brother’s face. Still, Mark only half-heartedly nodded in acknowledgment and said, “I guess so. Kind of neat.”
“Mucho strange, is what it is. It’s even got a smile.”
“Hope that’s not a sign of how you feel now that both Mom and Dad are gone.”
“That ain’t even fair, dog,” Eddie spat, his face twisted with contempt. It was a look Mark could relish because, deep down, Mark secretly hated his brother.
Clandestine by James Quinn
Book excerpt
Mexico City
The five-man bodyguard team, the Personal Escort Section, were wiped out almost at once.
They were at the halfway point, really only a few feet, between the door to the entrance of the high rise office block and the open door to the lead vehicle, when the gunfire started. The PES team didn’t stand a chance; they were just overwhelmed by the amount of guns attacking them from all angles.
When it went noisy, the PES team did everything right; putting themselves between the direction of the attackers, drawing their weapons. Bad news for them was that a sniper had taken out the lead vehicle driver at the same time. Whatever weapon that sniper was using, the round was big enough to get through bullet-proof glass.
I saw the team go down as assassins emerged from behind cars, bushes and lampposts and fired in short bursts. It left the Principal and his Protection Officer isolated and exposed. In a situation like this, seconds counted, so I gunned the engine and pulled the armoured Range Rover Sport quickly over to them to give them some cover from the gunfire from the left.
Shane, the Personal Protection Officer for the Principal, seeing that the route to the lead vehicle was a kill zone, quickly grabbed the smaller man and pushed/pulled him to my back-up vehicle. He flung open the door, pushed the Principal inside and onto the back seat, before jumping in after him and covering him with his body. It was standard operating procedure on a contact.
“GO, GO, GO!” he screamed.
I instantly clicked the button for the central locking system, locking the outside world out, and then put my foot down. We sped away at top speed, leaving the death and destruction behind us.
Beyond The Crack In The Sidewalk by Maryann Miller
Book excerpt
Jenny joined her husband on the front porch and relaxed against the back of the swing while breathing a sigh of relief. The baby was finally asleep, and the other two kids were in bed. Whether they were asleep or not, Jenny didn’t know. Nor did she care.
“Tired?” Michael asked.
“Yeah. It’s been one of those days.” Concealed beneath her standard reply, Jenny felt a need to tell him more. She wanted to describe how she felt that afternoon when the baby was screaming, the phone was ringing, the soup was spilling over the top of the saucepan, and Danny and Matthew were destroying the living room playing war games. But trying to verbalize it made it all seem so petty, so much like a scene contrived on Medicine Avenue to sell bath oil.
How could she explain the way all that nonsense was making her feel when she didn't understand it herself?
She, Jenny Corbett, had chosen motherhood and domesticity and was a great advocate of her right to so choose. So why wasn’t she content? On one level she knew, but she didn't fully get why the lot she’d chosen for her life was this great dichotomy between happy Mommy moments and being so overwhelmed she wanted to chuck it all. If she didn't understand, how could she expect Michael to? How could she tell him about that great knot of fear twisting itself around inside her each time she realized how easily her own frustration could turn her into an instant replay of her mother. Not that her mother had been horrible in the role. She didn’t abuse her or her sister. She was just always so remote, just going through the motions, and never taking time to do more than cook supper and wash clothes. Being a mother entailed so much more, and an emotional commitment she’d never found in her own mother.
Thunderlands by Stewart Bint
Book excerpt
Harrison Micklewhite didn’t speak a word of Norwegian, and thought it ridiculous that his client should drag him away from his London shop to close their deal aboard the Oslo to Bergen Express.
Granted, it wasn’t costing him a penny. His air fare from London to Oslo, the overnight hotel stop, the train ticket and the return flight from Bergen to London, were all coming out of Rupert Templeman-Hyde’s seemingly bottomless pocket.
But it had still meant shutting ‘White’s Philatelics’ for two days. He trusted his wife and loved her dearly, but even she had to admit her knowledge of the international stamp world left a lot to be desired.
He obeyed Mr Templeman-Hyde’s instructions to the letter and sat in an ordinary compartment until the train trundled through Nittedal Valley 15 miles out of Oslo. Then he set off down the train in search of compartment six in the fourth carriage.
It amazed him how quickly Mr Templeman-Hyde had got to hear that he had acquired the two stamps. It also amazed him that the billionaire should offer £2m for the pair. That was twice their market value, even though they were the only two of their kind in existence.
The telephone conversation between the two men had been brief and to the point. Mr Templeman-Hyde wanted those two stamps and was prepared to pay well for them; for his private collection, he said.
At first Micklewhite wasn’t sure. He was a great stamp lover himself, and felt they should be on display somewhere, not locked away depriving the eyes of the world. But when Mr Templeman-Hyde made his cash offer…well.
This was it. Compartment six. The blinds were pulled down inside. Micklewhite tapped hesitantly on the door.
What I Have Learned by Keith Kelly
Book excerpt
When younger, Dad gave me advice I dismissed.
“Old codgers, what do they know?”
I should have listened but didn’t. Young people never listen to older people. If we did, it would make being a kid a lot less fun. The older I get, the more I realize those older folks knew what they were talking about.
One time, my old man and I were raking pine needles. Standing under a patch of pine trees, he’d seemed so focused, not missing a needle. Satisfaction and peace were stored on his face.
I, on the other hand, was pissed, hot, and tired. Dad was trying to teach me the value of hard work. Eleven years old, I stood there complaining.
I remember him telling me,
“My father got me an after-school and weekend job in the train yard. My task was to shovel rocks from a boxcar.” Dad said he couldn’t get out of the boxcar by the time he’d emptied it.
The rock’s level had decreased so much. This story wasn’t true, but he’d made his point of working.
He encouraged me to attain an education. Life would be more comfortable with one.
Of course, at that age, I’d heard those things, but I never listened. Dad also once put me to work painting one of his rent houses when I was twelve years of age, it was hard work. My payment had been a boombox.
“Remember those from the eighties?”
There we have it: the six best short story collections from Next Chapter in March 2023. We hope you enjoy the books on this page - and if you do, please leave a comment below, or a review in Goodreads or your favorite store. We’d love to hear from you!
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