Best Fantasy Short Story Collections
Top 10 Best Fantasy Short Story Collections
: Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders, Magic for Beginners, Dreams Underfoot, Stranger Things Happen, The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, The Dying Earth, Snow White, Blood Red
Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions
| Author | Neil Gaiman |
| ISBN | 0380789027 |
In the deft hands of Neil Gaiman, magic is no mere illusion... and anything is possible. In this, Gaiman's first book of short stories, his imagination and supreme artistry transform a mundane world into a place of terrible wonders -- a place where an old woman can purchase the Holy Grail at a thrift...
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
| Author | Neil Gaiman |
| ISBN | 0060515228 |
This is a stunning collection of short stories by acclaimed fantasy writer Neil Gaiman. His distinctive genius has been championed by writers as diverse as Norman Mailer and Stephen King. With The Sandman Neil Gaiman created one of the most sophisticated, intelligent, and influential graphic novel...
| Author | Kelly Link |
| ISBN | 0156031876 |
The nine stories in Link's second collection are the spitting image of those in her acclaimed debut, Stranger Things Happen: effervescent blends of quirky humor and pathos that transform stock themes of genre fiction into the stuff of delicate lyrical fantasy. In "Stone Animals," a house's haunting...
| Author | Charles de Lint |
| ISBN | 0765306794 |
Welcome to Newford…
Welcome to the music clubs, the waterfront, the alleyways where ancient myths and magic spill into the modern world. Come meet Jilly, painting wonders in the rough city streets; and Geordie, playing fiddle while he dreams of a ghost; and the Angel of Grasso Street gathering...
| Author | Kelly Link |
| ISBN | 1931520003 |
This first collection by award-winning author Kelly Link takes fairy tales and cautionary tales, dictators and extraterrestrials, amnesiacs and honeymooners, revenants and readers alike, on a voyage into new, strange, and wonderful territory. The girl detective must go to the underworld to solve...
The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales
For almost two centuries, the stories of magic and myth gathered by the Brothers Grimm have been part of the way children — and adults — learn about the vagaries of the real world.
Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow-White, Hänsel and Gretel, Little Red-Cap (a.k.a. Little Red Riding Hood), and...
The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth
| Author | Sarah Monette |
| ISBN | 0809557770 |
Admirers of M.R. James will discover much to dote on in this collection of linked short stories revolving around a museum archivist specializing in rare manuscripts, who has the unenviable misfortune of routinely confronting the bizarre and the not-so-natural. Sarah Monette has crafted and polished...
| Author | A.S. Byatt |
| ISBN | 0679762221 |
The magnificent title story of this collection of fairy tales for adults describes the strange and uncanny relationship between its extravagantly intelligent heroine--a world renowned scholar of the art of story-telling--and the marvelous being that lives in a mysterious bottle, found in a dusty...
| Author | Jack Vance |
| ISBN | 0671831526 |
I did not like this book much the first time I read it, but after reading it a second time while visualizing its characters as puppets, I found I liked it much more.
This book—particularly the first three stories—irritated me. I found its wizards to be contemptible creatures, morally...
| Author | Ellen Datlow |
| ISBN | 0380718758 |
Once upon a time, fairy tales were for children... But no longer.
You hold in your hands a volume of wonders -- magical tales of trolls and ogres, of bewitched princesses and kingdoms accursed, penned by some of the most acclaimed fantasists of our day. But these are not bedtime stories designed...
| Author | Sharyn November |
| ISBN | 0142405493 |
This is going to be a bit of a cheat review because I’ve acknowledged to myself that the only reason I checked out this anthology was to read the Joss and Mavkel story The Real Thing by Alison Goodman. I may choose to keep renewing this thing like a jerk so I can keep it and read the Kelly Link or Tamora Pierce...
| Author | Ursula K. Le Guin |
| ISBN | 0441011241 |
Tales from Earth Sea (The Earthsea Cycle, #5), Ursula K. Le Guin
Tales from Earthsea is a collection of fantasy stories and essays by American author Ursula K. Le Guin, published by Harcourt in 2001. It accompanies five novels (1968 to 2001) set in the fictional archipelago Earthsea.
"The Finder"....
The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest
| Author | Ellen Datlow |
| ISBN | 0142400297 |
One of our most universal myths is that of the Green Man, the spirit who stands for Nature in its most wild and untamed form. Through the ages and around the world, the Green Man and other nature spirits have appeared in stories, songs, and artwork, as well as many beloved fantasy novels, including Tolkien's...
| Author | Ellen Datlow |
| ISBN | 0670061948 |
Coyote. Anansi. Brer Rabbit. Trickster characters have long been a staple of folk literature, and are a natural choice for the overarching subject of acclaimed editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's third mythic anthology. The Coyote Road features a remarkable range of authors, each with his...
| Author | Oscar Wilde |
| ISBN | 1934169579 |
The Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde includes the two definitive story collections The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891). This volume collects exquisite and poignant tales of true beauty, selfless love, generosity, loyalty, brilliant wit, and moral aestheticism,...
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
| Author | Karen Russell |
| ISBN | 0307263983 |
In these ten glittering short stories, debut author Karen Russell takes us to the ghostly and magical swamps of the Florida Everglades. Here, wolf-like girls are reformed by nuns; a family makes its living wrestling alligators in a theme park; and little girls sail away on crab shells. Filled with stunning...
| Author | Sarah Monette |
| ISBN | 1607013053 |
Monette's diverse collection delves deeply into the mythic and reaches far beyond everyday reality. Readers cannot resist journeying with her into realms-dangerously dark or illuminatingly revelatory-they could never imagine without her as their guide. From ghost stories in the tradition of...
| Author | Charles de Lint |
| ISBN | 0312868405 |
World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Onion Girl
The city of Newford could be any contemporary North American city...except that magic lurks in its music, in its art, in the shadows of its grittiest streets, where mythic beings walk disguised. And its people are like you and me, each looking...
| Author | Charles de Lint |
| ISBN | 0765309173 |
Return to Newford
Familiar to Charles de Lint's ever-growing audience as the setting of the novels Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, The Onion Girl, and many others, Newford is the quintessential North American city, tough and streetwise on the surface and rich with hidden magic for those...
| Author | Robin McKinley |
| ISBN | 0698119606 |
Master storyteller Robin McKinley here spins two new fairy tales and retells two cherished classics. All feature princesses touched with or by magic. There is Linadel, who lives in a kingdom next to Faerieland, where princesses are stolen away on their seventeenth birthdays-and Linadel's seventeenth...
| Author | Ellen Datlow |
| ISBN | 0380778726 |
""Once upon a time ..." So begin the classic fairy tales that enthralled and terrified us as children. Now, in their third critically acclaimed collection of original fairy tales for adults, World Fantasy Award-winning editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling bring us twenty-one new stories by some...
| Author | Patricia A. McKillip |
| ISBN | 0441014437 |
A fantasist without equal, Patricia A. McKillip has created worlds of intricate beauty and unforgettably nuanced characters. For 25 years, she's drawn readers into her spell, spinning modern-day fables with a grace rarely seen. Now she presents a book of previously uncollected short stories, full...
| Author | Jack Dann |
| ISBN | 0425215180 |
Never-before-published stories by Neil Gaiman, Eoin Colfer, Garth Nix, and a magical lineup of writers.
Throughout the ages, the wizard has claimed a spot in human culture-from the shadowy spiritual leaders of early man to precocious characters in blockbuster films. Gone are the cartoon...
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
| Author | Ursula K. Le Guin |
| ISBN | 0060763515 |
The winner of the Pushcart Prize, the Kafka Award, and the National Book Award, Ursula K. Le Guin has created a profound and transformational literature. The award-winning stories in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea range from the everyday to the outer limits of experience, where the quantum uncertainties...
| Author | Elizabeth Bear |
| ISBN | 1596061065 |
Abigail Irene Garrett drinks too much. She makes scandalous liaisons with inappropriate men, and if in her youth she was a famous beauty, now she is both formidable--and notorious. She is a forensic sorceress, and a dedicated officer of a Crown that does not deserve her loyalty. She has nothing, but...
| Author | Elizabeth Hand |
| ISBN | 1595820965 |
Widely praised and widely read, Elizabeth Hand is regarded as one of America's leading literary fantasists. This new collection (an expansion of the limited-release Bibliomancy, which won the World Fantasy Award in 2005) showcases a wildly inventive author at the height of her powers. Included...
| Author | Sharyn November |
| ISBN | 0142403202 |
Firebirds is more than simply an anthology -- it is a celebration of wonderful writing. It gathers together sixteen original stories by some of today's finest writers of fantasy and science fiction. Together, they have won virtually every major prize -- from the National Book Award to the World Fantasy...
| Author | Douglas A. Anderson |
| ISBN | 0345458567 |
“A superb collection, a splendid and much-needed book. Anderson has cleared away the dross and shown us the golden roots of fantasy before it became a genre.”
–Michael Moorcock, author of The Eternal Champion
Many of today’s top names in fantasy acknowledge J.R.R. Tolkien as...
| Author | Robin McKinley |
| ISBN | 0142402443 |
Seven tales describe magical beings that inhabit our waters. Some are familiar mer-people; some as strange as as a golden eye in a pool at the edge of the Great Desert Kalarsham, where the mad god Geljdreth rules; or the unknowable, immense Kraken, dark beyond the darkness of the deepest ocean, who will...
| Author | Holly Black |
| ISBN | 1416989536 |
It's a question as old as time itself: which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? In this anthology, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (unicorn and zombie, respectively), strong arguments are made for both sides in the form of short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths--for...
| Author | Ellen Datlow |
| ISBN | 0380786222 |
The four previous volumes in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's anthology series of fairly tales retold with a distinctively modern edge have been hailded by reviewers as "brilliant," "provocative," and "disturbing." In this triumphant new collection of original fiction, twenty-one of today's...
| Author | Clark Ashton Smith |
| ISBN | 0870541560 |
In 1927, H.P. Lovecraft wrote about Clark Ashton Smith: "In sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Mr. Smith is perhaps unexcelled by any other writer dead or living. Who else has seen such gorgeous, luxuriant, and feverishly distorted visions of infinite spheres and multiple dimensions...
| Author | Terri Windling |
| ISBN | 0312862210 |
I'm a big fan of Terri Windling, and make an effort to seek out her anthologies. Thus, I got this one. I'd heard rave reviews of it - people saying "This is the one that made a difference in my life!"
I was a bit quizzical about that, because for me, that was 'Bordertown.' And for me, it remains Bordertown,...
| Author | Stephen R. Donaldson |
| ISBN | 0345314433 |
The Creator Of Thomas Covenant Adds Eight New Wonders To The World.
In his first collection of short fiction, the bestselling author of White Gold Wielder presents eight superb stories, including "Gilden-Fire," the famous "outtake" from Illearth War, and two brand new novellas written...
| Author | Tanith Lee |
| ISBN | 0886771315 |
NIGHT'S MASTER is the first book of the stunning arabesque high fantasy series Tales from the Flat Earth, which, in the manner of The One Thousand and One Nights, portrays an ancient world in mythic grandeur via connected tales.
Long time ago when the Earth was Flat, beautiful indifferent Gods...
| Author | Ellen Datlow |
| ISBN | 0142404063 |
Faeries, or creatures like them, can be found in almost every culture the world over--benevolent and terrifying, charming and exasperating, shifting shape from country to country, story to story, and moment to moment. In The Faery Reel, acclaimed anthologists Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have...
| Author | Robin McKinley |
| ISBN | 0399252894 |
5 tales set from prehistoric to present, market to dragon academy.
1 First Flight - a boy and pet unexpectedly ride a dragon
2 Hellhound - stars a mysterious dog in a graveyard showdown
3 Fireworm - a young man must defend his clan from a creature
4 Salamander Man - a slave saves his village...
| Author | Patricia C. Wrede |
| ISBN | 0152055088 |
Wrede [pronounced as "Reedy"] is one of my favorite authors, and IMO one of the best writers of English-language fantasy fiction in her generation. Equally at home with long and short fiction, she showcases her talent for the latter in this collection of 10 stories, four of them published here for the...
| Author | Diana Wynne Jones |
| ISBN | 0060555351 |
Master storyteller Diana Wynne Jones presents a riveting collection of unpredictable tales, including:
* A cat tells how the kindhearted wizard she owns is suddenly called upon to defeat a horrific Beast.
* When Anne has mumps, her drawings come to life, and she must protect her home...
| Author | Ellen Datlow |
| ISBN | 0809557754 |
The award-winning editors of Snow White, Blood Red return us to distinctly adult realms of myth and the fantastic -- with 18 wondrous works that cloak the magical fictions we heard at grandma's knee in mantles of darkness and dread. From Roger Zelansky's delightful tale of Death's disobedient godson...
| Author | Ellen Datlow |
| ISBN | 0380975238 |
In their fourth collection of original adult fairy tales written by some of the premier names in literature today, World Fantasy Award-winning editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling transport readers deep into an enchanted forest with a stunning array of magical stories - bringing us the princes...
| Author | Ellen Datlow |
| ISBN | 0380786230 |
Hair bright as gold...Lips red as blood...Heart black as sin...Truth sharp as bone...
As in their previous critically acclaimed volumes of reconsidered fairy tales, award-winning editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have gathered together remarkable stories that illuminate the...
| Author | Jack Dann |
| ISBN | 0441017649 |
Never before published stories by New York Times bestselling authors Jonathan Stroud, Gregory Maguire, Garth Nix, Diana Gabaldon, and others.
Whether portrayed as fire-breathing reptilian beasts at war with humanity or as noble creatures capable of speech and mystically bonded to the warriors...
| Author | Jeff VanderMeer |
| ISBN | 1892391759 |
Replete with whimsical mechanical wonders and charmingly anachronistic settings, this pioneering anthology gathers a brilliant blend of fantastical stories. Steampunk originates in the romantic elegance of the Victorian era and blends in modern scientific advances—synthesizing imaginative...
| Author | Steven Millhauser |
| ISBN | 1564781798 |
The Barnum Museum is a combination waxworks, masked ball, and circus sideshow masquerading as a collection of short stories. Within its pages, note such sights as: a study of the motives and strategies used by the participants in the game of Clue, including the seduction of Miss Scarlet by Colonel Mustard;...
| Author | John Collier |
| ISBN | 1590170512 |
John Collier's edgy, sardonic tales are works of rare wit, curious insight, and scary implication. They stand out as one of the pinnacles in the critically neglected but perennially popular tradition of weird writing that includes E.T.A. Hoffmann and Charles Dickens as well as more recent masters...
| Author | Andrew M. Greeley |
| ISBN | 0765305046 |
Mythology and magic come alive in this collection of Irish fantasy stories by some of today's finest authors.
Ireland is a nation that holds fast to its history and heritage, and nowhere is that more true than in its folktales and legends. From the great Celtic myths featuring the bard Taliesin,...
| Author | Sheree Thomas |
| ISBN | 0446677248 |
This volume introduces black science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction writers to the generations of readers who have not had the chance to explore the scope and diversity among African-American writers.
Fiction.
Sister Lilith - Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
The Comet...
| Author | Tanith Lee |
| ISBN | 0886770033 |
THE GORGON, a brilliant shocker that leads off this scintillating collection of Tanith Lee's tales, was the winner of the World Fantasy Award for best short story of the year in 1983. It is appropriate that it gives its title to these tales ranging from horror and the supernatural to science fiction,...
Wonder Tales: The Book of Wonder and Tales of Wonder
| Author | Lord Dunsany |
| ISBN | 0486432017 |
Irish writer Edward J. M. D. Plunkett (1878–1957), the eighteenth Baron Dunsany, was one of English literature's most original talents. The author of many of the best fantastic tales in the language, he was also a great influence on other writers of the genre. American novelist H. P. Lovecraft wrote:...
| Author | Tanith Lee |
| ISBN | 0879977906 |
How would it be if Snow White were the real villain & the wicked queen just a sadly maligned innocent? What if awakening the Sleeping Beauty should be the mistake of a lifetime--of several lifetimes? What if the famous folk tales were retold with an eye to more horrific possibilities?
Only...
| Author | Esther M. Friesner |
| ISBN | 1439132747 |
Move over, urban fantasy--here comes "suburban" fantasy. What self-respecting witch, vampire, or werewolf would be caught dead--or undead--anywhere but the Big City, you may ask? Look, let's give the uncanny crew a little credit for intelligence: If they had the smarts to see the advantage in packing...
| Author | Rhonda Parrish |
| ISBN | 0692687203 |
Sirens are beautiful, dangerous, and musical, whether they come from the sea or the sky. Greek sirens were described as part-bird, part-woman, and Roman sirens more like mermaids, but both had a voice that could captivate and destroy the strongest man. The pages of this book contain the stories of the...
| Author | Jeffrey Ford |
| ISBN | 1930846398 |
Mixing the mundane with the metaphysical, the pairings of the everyday and the extraordinary in this collection of short fiction yield supernatural results—a young musician perceives another world while drinking coffee, a fairy chronicles his busy life in a sandcastle during the changing tide,...
| Author | Catherynne M. Valente |
| ISBN | 1421556138 |
Science fiction and fantasy stories about Japan by the multiple-award winning author and New York Times best seller Catherynne M. Valente. A collection of some of Catherynne Valente's most admired stories, including the Hugo Award-nominated novella "Silently and Very Fast" and the Locus Award...
Mother Aegypt and Other Stories
| Author | Kage Baker |
| ISBN | 1597800570 |
For some reason it wasn't calling to me. It was on my stack for nine weeks and I never cracked it open until I got the notice that there were no more renewals.
And then I was blown away. These are great stories and an interesting mix, one feels very much like The Twilight Zone, others have a small town...
13 Phantasms and Other Stories
| Author | James P. Blaylock |
| ISBN | 0441010148 |
If you have not yet reached midlife, you might want to subtract a couple of stars from my rating, or wait an appropriate number of years before reading this volume. Blaylock writes with a rare, ethereal subtlety on subjects that I simply would not have appreciated in the same way as a young man. The best...
