Books like Collected short stories
Collected short stories by William Somerset Maugham reads as cynical, observant. These 12 books share its genome — matched by how they actually read, not just their shelf label.
The Garden Party and other stories
Katherine Mansfield · 1922
Shares the vspare thread
Short stories
Guy de Maupassant · 1893
Each story is a brisk, ironic snapshot of ordinary lives undone by vanity, poverty, or fate — bleak and observant rather than sentimental.
Tellers of tales
William Somerset Maugham · 1939
Shares the vspare thread
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories
Anton Chekhov · 2007
A collection of spare, piercing stories where ordinary lives and small private defeats reveal quiet yearning and loneliness.
Stories [30 stories]
Антон Павлович Чехов · 2000
Shares the vspare thread
Dance of the Happy Shades
Alice Munro · 1968
Shares the vspare thread
In other rooms, other wonders
Daniyal Mueenuddin · 2009
Shares the vspare thread
Skin and Other Stories
Roald Dahl · 2000
Thirteen compact tales that build quietly to sharp, often macabre twists — sly, unsettling, and morally cool-eyed rather than sentimental.
Hedda Gabler
Henrik Ibsen · 1890
A taut psychological drama of aristocratic entrapment and self-destruction, where a woman's manipulative agency clashes against rigid social convention, culminating in intimate moral collapse.
The last word and other stories
Graham Greene · 1990
A collection exploring the moral fractures and psychological depths within ordinary lives, Greene's final work distills his signature dark introspection into short-form narratives of alienation and ambiguous human choice.
Ancient Lineage and Other Stories
Morley Callaghan · 2012
Shares the vspare thread
The Winter of Our Discontent
John Steinbeck · 1961
A morally searching portrait of a decent man weighing what success costs in a country that treats acquisition as a kind of sanctioned savagery.
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