Short Story Reading in February 2017, Part 1

In late January, Richard Robinson at Tip the Wink suggested Short Story February, where we will focus on short stories during that month. I have read a couple of books for previous commitments this month, but for the most part, I have been reading short stories this month.

I finished one book of short stories by Michael Gilbert, Game Without Rules. There are eleven stories in this book, and they are all about the spies, Mr Calder and Mr Behrens. Both are in their fifties, and called upon when needed to handle special projects and missions. It is a wonderful book and I loved all the stories. I cannot even name a favorite. I will do a separate post on this book later.

The stories in this book are:

1. "The Road to Damascus"
2. "On Slay Down"
3. "The Spoilers"
4. "The Cat Cracker"
5. "Trembling's Tours"
6. "The Headmaster"
7. "Heilige Nacht"
8. "Upon the King..."
9. "Cross-Over"
10. "Prometheus Unbound"
11. "A Prince of Abyssinia"

The rest of the books I sampled stories from, although I do hope to finish one of two of them before the end of the month. They are:

Miniatures by John Scalzi
Miniatures is a small book full of very short stories. The stories are all science fiction, but of the ones I have read so far, they are all so light and humorous that they really don't feel like science fiction at all.

1. "Pluto Tells All"
2. “Denise Jones, Superbooker”
3. "When the Yogurt Took Over"
4. "The Other Large Thing"
5. "The State of Super Villainy" ( follow-up to Denise Jones, Superbooker)
6. "New Directive for Employee-Manxte Interactions"

IN SUNLIGHT OR IN SHADOW: 
Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper
edited by Lawrence Block

1. "Girlie Show"  by Megan Abbott
2. "The Story of Caroline" by Jill D. Block
3. "Soir Bleu" by Robert Olen Butler
4. "The Truth About What Happened" by Lee Child
5. "Rooms by the Sea" by Nicholas Christopher

I especially liked "Girlie Show", a story about a woman who is forced by her husband to pose for the painting he is working on. A dark story with a very good ending.
And "The Story of Caroline" about a daughter who wants to see her birth mother.
And "Rooms by the Sea", which is about an unusual family with an unusual house, with elements of magical realism.

Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics
edited by Lawrence Block

1. “Mrs. Manstey’s View” by Edith Wharton (1891) – This was the author’s first published short story.
2. “A Poker Game” by Stephen Crane (1902) – Didn't really get this story.
3. “The Furnished Room” by O. Henry (1906) – Dark with an ironic ending.
4. “Spanish Blood” by Langston Hughes (1934) – Set in Harlem,during the Prohibition era.
5. “Sailor off the Bremen” by Irwin Shaw (1939) – A tale of revenge, very noir. Lots of violence, the darkest tale so far.
6. “My Aunt from Twelfth Street” by Jerome Weidman (1939) – A strange story about a young boy who visits his aunt, a Galician, who refuses to live in the same neighborhood as her relatives and others of the same background. 

OxCrimes (introd. by Ian Rankin, ed. by Mark Ellingham and Peter Florence)

1. "Buy and Bust" by Simon Lewis
2. "I’ve Seen That Movie Too" by Val McDermid
3. "Caught Short" by Anthony Horowitz
4. "An Afternoon" by Ian Rankin

All of those stories were very good. The Anthony Horowitz story was darker than I expected from him. The story from Ian Rankin was unusual in that it was written before he had begun writing crime fiction novels. It was interesting but a bit confusing to me, but I did enjoy the comments by Rankin that followed the story.

I had read the first two stories in this book earlier:  "The Dead Their Eyes Implore Us" by George Pelecanos and "Case of Death and Honey" by Neil Gaiman. I enjoyed both of those stories also.