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Classic Short Fiction Online

Longer Classics Online

Contemporary Fiction Online

Novels Recommended by NYU Students and Others

Writers Recommended by Students and Friends

Still More Prose Recommended
by Students and Friends

Poetry

 

 

Suzanne McConnell, an editor at BELLEVUE LITERARY REVIEW, introduces an excellent short story by Joan LeeGant called "Sisters of Mercy."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Novels recommended by my friends and students as exemplary and worthy of enjoyment and even study:

 

Odd Girl Out by Anne Bannon
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Bertenz

The Savage Detectrives by Roberto Bolano

Exiles in America  by Christopher Bram

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Thank You for Smoking by  Christopher Buckley

Pulp by Charles Bukowski  

Possession by A.S. Byatt

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen Carter

The Brass Verdict by Michael Connolly

The Alchemist Paulo Coelho
The Witch from Portobello by Paulo Coelho  

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Drown Junot Diaz

Billy Bathgate E.L. Doctorow

Love Medicine by Lousie Erdrich

The Eyre Affair Jasper Fford

 World Without End by Ken Follett

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

A Place of Hiding Elizabeth George

Three Junes Julia Glass

Lord of the Flies William Golding

Love the One You're With Emily Griffin

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night (" Great voice") Mark Haddon

Tinkers by Paul Harding

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ( " Freedom to be Imaginative.") Murakami Haruki

Kite Runner by Khalid Hoseini

What I Loved by Siri Hustredt

Never Let Me Go by) Kazuo Ichiguro

Body of Lies by David Ignatious

The World According to Garp John Irving 

The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver

Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

100 Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A Game of Thrones George R.R. Martin

The Road Cormac McCarthy

Atonement Ian McEwan

The Senator's Wife Sue Miller

Black Swan Green David Mitchell

Beloved  by Toni Morrison

The Time Travelers's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 

Northern Lights by Tim O Brien

Coming Up for Air George Orwell

Invisible Monsters Chuck Palahniuk

My Name is Red Orhan Pamuk

Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak

Vernon God Little D.B.C. Pierre

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marsha Pelils

Lush Life Richard Price

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

Harry Potter books J.K. Rowling

Push  by Sapphire

Nine Stories J.D. Salinger

Blindness Jose Saramago

King Kong on East 4th St. by Jagna Wojcicka Sharff 

On the Waterfront (Shooting Script) by Budd Schulberg

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

War and Peace by Tolstoy

The Secret History by Donna Tratt

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit Jeanette Winterson

Man in Full by Tom Wolfe

Revolutionary Road  by Richard Yates

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron 

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More writers     

Orson Scott Card

Barbara Kingsolver

Hemingway

Richard Morgan

Alice Munro

 

 

 

Contemporary Fiction Online

"Rite of Passage" by John Birth

Suzanne McConnell, an editor at BELLEVUE LITERARY REVIEW, introduces an excellent short story by Joan LeeGant called "Sisters of Mercy."

"Happy Endings" by Margaret Atwood.

John Birch "We Are At War" (story of the beginning of a war and some of its unbloody but painful repercussions)

Kate Blakinger "Living in Reverse"  (story)

"The Keeper" by Krishan Coupland

Ashley Cowger "8 Stories I'll Never Tell"

Carol Emshwiller’s Chapter Two from The Mount (novel chapter)

"Michael Ryan" by Joyce A. Griffin

"Pencils" by Tai Dong Huai

"Whale Migration" by Daniel Hudon

"She" by Charles Kaufmann

Edith Konecky ”Cocktail Hour" (novel part)

"Stone" by Miriam N. Kotzin

"Nine" by Aryn Kyle

"Killing Rabbits" by Jen Michalski

Liliana by Maile Meloy

Joan Newburger "Death and Taxes" (story)

"Aperçus"by Charles Rammelkamp.

"The Dead Know Nothing," by Charles Rammelkamp.

Matt Schweiger A REALISTIC ASSESSMENT OF HOW MANY 12-YEAR-OLDS I COULD BEAT UP BEFORE THEY OVERTOOK ME" (story)

 "Starving Makes It Fat" by Kay Sexton

"The Armoire" by Kathryn Shaver

Diane Simmons' "Ticket" (story)

"Color of Sky" by Grant Tracey

"Temptation" by Eva White

 "1969" and  "Evenings with Dotson"  by Meredith Sue Willis , (Two stories that began with the same material)

"Tracks in the Snow" by Joyce Yarrow

 

Classic Short Fiction Online:

 

Borges, "The Secret Miracle."

Chekhov, "The Lady with the Lapdog"

"Desiree's Baby" by Kate Chopin

"The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant

Susan Glaspell “A Jury of her Peers”

"The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs

"Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville

I.B. Singer, "The Brooch"

James Thurber " The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"

”Why I Live at the P.O."  by Eudora Welty

William Carlos Williams "The Use of Force" or here.

"We Are At War" by John Birch:   Wonderful story of the beginning of a war and some of its unbloody but painful repercussions:

 

Classic Long Stories and Selections

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer

Dickens Opening of Bleak House

George Eliot’s description of Hall Farm in Adam Bede

Gustave Flaubert's "Un Coeur Simple" (or, in English "A Simple Soul")

Henry James, opening of Portrait of a Lady

James Joyce “The Dead”

Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" (long story)

Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych”

 

Poetry Online

Charles Bukowski "So You Want to Be a Writer"

 

More Recommended Prose

Short stories, unless otherwise stated.

Abbott, Megan             Bury Me Deep        (Angela Laurio)
Andersen, Hans Christian       "The Emperor's New Clothes"        (Mercedes )
Atwood, Margaret        "Happy Endings"        (Caylin Harris)
Bukowski, Charles        Factotum (novel)        (Michael Conway)
                                  "So You Want to be a Writer"        (poem)       (Rémy Renault)
Chandler, Raymond      The Big Sleep (novel)        (Angela Laurio)
Cheever, John              "The Country Husband"        (Liz Iannotti)
Chen, Denise               "Data Ecosystem Products"       (Diane Klein)
(http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/stories-week-2010%E2%80%932011/data-ecosystem-products)
Diaz, Junot                   "Ysrael"        (Mercedes )
Erdrich, Louise              The Years of My Birth        (Deb Gaisford)
Foer, Jonathan Safran    New Collection        (Mary Taylor)
Griffin, Joyce A.             "Michael Ryan"        (Angela Laurio)
Huai, Tai Dong               "Pencils"       (David Naistadt)
Ludlum, Robert              The Bourne Ultimatum (novel)        (David Naistadt)
Martin, Demitr                Who Am I        (Jason Borg)
       http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/02/28/110228sh_shouts_martin
Nabokov, Vladimir           Invitation to a Beheading (Novella)        (Daria Solovieva)
Poe, Edgar Allen            "The Tell Tale Heart"        (Neil James)
Shteyngart, Gary            "Lenny Hearts Eunice"       (Daria Solovieva)
Sorby, Angela                "The Crimson Tree"        (Neil James)
       http://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/133629476/the-crimson-tree
Tracey, Grant                 "Color of Sky"       (Jenny Stahl)
(Traditonal)                     "Goldilocks and the Three Bears"        (Diane Klein)
Varicella, Christopher      "Weiner Roast"        (Rémy Renault)

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