I’m still frantically trying to finish the multiple short story collections on my stack, but there’s always room for more on the TBR!

This month I discovered (and promptly ordered secondhand):

• Arranged Marriage by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (via Lisa of Hopewell’s Public Library of Life), a collection about the South Asian immigrant experience that I thought could be a good follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies
• Alice by Judith Hermann (via Brona of This Reading Life), linked short stories that would also count towards German Literature Month in November

It’s been a while since I’ve read anything of Tom Cox’s, but I loved Jan’s description of his new collection, Curious Events Lately Occurring in This Neighbourhood, as “a sketch show” with “a certain skewed perception, a certain willingness to embrace the surreal.” I’m also always partial to flash fiction, too, which this is at least in part.

I came across Roald Dahl’s short stories for grown-ups through Cathy’s review of Kiss, Kiss at 746 Books and will borrow his collected stories from the university library for next year’s challenge.

I am really enjoying a different spooky collection of Celia Fremlin’s at the moment, so I will have to source By Horror Haunted (reviewed by Helen at She Reads Novels).

Diana’s review of multiple collections by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky at Thoughts on Papyrus piqued my interest and I managed to find one story, “Quadraturin,” with the full text online to read another time.

Both Nancy Elin and Rose featured a selection of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham; Rose even said she thinks his stories are better than his novels, so I know I’ve got to read some. I have the volume Creatures of Circumstance, and can access others from the public library.

Last month I earned a £70 voucher for doing a Teams call about my reading and book-buying habits with a UX researcher at Awesomebooks.com (she didn’t know what she was in for!) – my favourite place to buy secondhand books online – and spent it at the weekend. I have two new copies on the way as part of that big order, one of which is a collection of uncanny stories that I’ve had in my sights ever since I first heard about it: The Good Eye by Jess Gibson, Margaret Atwood’s daughter. I could read it as part of Margaret Atwood Reading Month in November; I’ll just confirm with Marcie (Buried in Print) that that’s going ahead this year.

Have you discovered any new stories or collections this month?