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Making a trip to Edinburgh? This wonderful collection of stories, articles, memoirs, letters, poems and tales about Edinburgh past and present will prove invaluable:
For centuries Edinburgh, ‘the most beautiful city in Europe’ according to John Betjeman, has inspired affection and admiration from both natives and visitors alike. This absorbing anthology spans five hundred years of the city's history from the Battle of Flodden to the novels of lan Rankin, with famous names such as Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson alongside less familiar ones such as the Chinese writer Chiang Yee. This book is a great tribute to a city now in the full flood of a social, political and cultural renaissance. Editor: Ralph Lownie. (335 pages)

Contents: Introduction — First Impressions — Places — People — Visitors — Everyday Life In Adversity And Joy — Pillars of the City — A Final Tribute.

A great regional anthology from the North of England. Many excellent stories in a collection which reflects the new wave of new fiction talent in the North of England. Barbers with built-up soles, cross-dressers, illicit affairs, orang-utans, crime in the city, homelessness, peeping toms and relationships of all kinds — these stories are enormously varied in setting and style but very satisfying.  A teachable selection. (140 pages)
Level: Gymnasiet etc C-A

A very popular new collection of 35 stories written primarily (but not exclusively) for and by women:
There are tales of love, friendship, passion and betrayal from some of the top names in fiction. A woman plans not only what she wants to wear to a school reunion, but who she wants to be ... A couple hope to start a new life in Spain but each of them completely misunderstands what the other one wants ... A girl whose brother falls in love with a beautiful male impersonator ... A woman haunted by ghosts from her past ... A newly divorced mother taking her teenage daughter to Crete for a holiday, longing to be young again, until she remembers how awful it is to be 17.
There are stories by Maeve Binchy, Jane Fallon, Adriana Trigiani, Alexander McCall Smith, Anne Fine, Nicci French, Rosie Thomas, Joanna Trollope, Mark Mills, Kath Lette, Victoria Hislop, Wendy Holden and many others.
Level: Gymnasiet

For the past few years Roddy Doyle has been writing stories for “Metro Eireann”, a newspaper started by, and aimed at, immigrants to Ireland. Each of the stories takes a new slant on the immigrant experience, something of increasing relevance in today's Ireland. The stories range from Guess Who's Coming to the Dinner, where a father who prides himself on his open-mindedness when his daughters talk about sex, is forced to confront his feelings when one of them brings home a black fella, to a terrifying ghost story, The Pram, in which a Polish nanny grows impatient with her charge’s older sisters and decides — in a phrase she has learnt — to ‘scare them shitless’. Most of the stories are very funny — in 57 percent Irish Ray Brady tries to devise a test of Irishness by measuring reactions to Robbie Keane’s goal against Germany in the 2002 World Cup, Riverdance and ‘Danny Boy’ — others are deeply moving. And best of all, in the title story itself, Jimmy Rabbitte, the man who formed The Commitments, decides it's time to find a new band, and this time no White Irish need apply! Multicultural to a fault, The Deportees specialise not in soul music this time, but the songs of Woody Guthrie. Author: Roddy Doyle. (242 pages)
Level: For use from 10.kl./beginning of the gymnasium

Frank Myszor’s excellent introduction to a field that is very important in everyday teaching. Read the whole book or just pick out the bits you need. Contents: 1. Putting Short Stories in their Place (The 19thCentury, Modernism, Contemporary and Post-modern — looks at the individual authors and trends); 2. Approaching the texts (Point of view, Plotting etc.); 3. Stories and extracts; 4. Critical approaches; 5. Resources
A volume in the Contexts in Literature series,
Level: Library/Depot

What are Nanotales?
Nanotales are a style of literature formed for a generation with very little patience!
A nanotale is designed to be read between tube stations, with a morning coffee, or at the bus-stop.
A nanotale should be capable of producing an intense emotional response — pain, panic, euphoria or ecstasy.
A nanotale aims to transport the reader into another world and back in just seven minutes.

In this book with no chapters, no page numbers and no index, Ziv Navoth takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride into the trials and tribulations of ordinary people — from the moral dilemma of the advertising executive briefed to create a campaign for an imaginary war, to the anguish of the widow faced with explaining her husband's death to her little boy.
The author, Ziv Navoth, is the son of a Secret Service officer, born in Israel, raised in Tehran and Washington and now living in London. (252 pages)
Level: C+

The classic collection of 18 stories by William Boyd:
Adolescent sex in a Scottish boys’ public school ... oddballs on the seedy side of America ... murder in a quiet Devon cottage ... Boyd's writing combines violence, comedy, experiment and great variety. In the great title story Boyd confronts America’s hidden class system, the clinical terror of modern warfare, economic and social exploitation, and how whole societies can be built on domination for domination's sake. (226 pages)
Level: Gymnasiet A-B

Contents: Introduction; The Land Ironclads (H.G.Wells); Finis (Frank Pollack); As Easy as ABC (Rudyard Kipling); The Metal Man (Jack Williamson); A Martian Odyssey (Stanley Weinbaum); Night (John W. Campbell); Desertion (Clifford Simak); The Piper's Son (Lewis Padgett); The Monster (A.E. van Vogt); The Second Night of Summer (James Schmitz); Second Dawn (Arthur C. Clarke); Crucifixus Etiam (Walter Miller); The Tunnel Under the World (Frederik Pohl); Who Can Replace a Man? (Brian Aldiss); Billennium (J.G.Ballard); The Ballard of Lost C'mell (Cordwainer Smith); Semley's Necklace (Ursula Le Guin)); How Beautiful with Banners (James Blish); A Criminal Act (Harry Harrison)); Problems of Creativeness (Thomas Disch); How the Whip Came Back (Gene Wolfe); Cloak of Anarchy (Larry Niven); A Thing of Beauty (Norman Spinrad); The Screwfly Solution (Raccoona); The Way of Cross and Dragon (George Martin); Swarm (Bruce Sterling); Burning Chrome (William Gibson); Silicon Muse (Hilbert Schenck); Karl and the Ogre (Paul McAuley); Piecework (David Brin); Select Bibliography.

Tales of the supernatural, social realism, humorous stories, disturbing stories, rural stories, urban stories. This anthology captures the variety and vitality of the Scottish short story. It begins with three early traditional tales, and includes a wealth of writers from the last three centuries: amongst them Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, J. M. Barrie, Violet Jacob, Neil Gunn, Eric Linklater, Alasdair Gray, James Kelman, and younger talents such as Ronald Frame, Janice Galloway, and A. L. Kennedy. Editor: Douglas Dunn. (477 pages)
Level: Gymnasiet/Library/Depot

Authors represented (1-3 stories each): Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Tolstoy, Bierce, Jewett, de Maupassant, Chopin, Conrad, Chekhov, Perkins Gilman, Crane, Cather, Sherwood Anderson, London, Joyce, Kafka, Lawrence, Mansfield, Porter, Hurston, Faulkner, Borges, Hemingway, Frank O'Connor, Wright, Welty, Cheever, Olsen, Ellsion, Shirley Jackson, Paley, Gordimer, Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, Márquez, Achebe, Rifaat, Munro, Updike, Mohr, Carver, Oates, Atwood, Bambara, Banks, Mukherjee, Allende, Bobbie Ann Mason, Walker, Tin O'Brien, Silko, Kincaid, Amy Tan, Cisneros, Erdrich, Gish Jen, Ha Jin, Divakaruni, David Foster Wallace, Alexie, Lahiri, Díaz, ZZ Packer.

Casebooks: Raymond Carver (essays by and about Raymond Carver); Flannery O'Connor (essays by and about Flannery O'Connor); Graphic Storytelling.

Appendices: Reading Short Stories, The Elements of Fiction, A Brief History of the Short Story, Writing About Short Stories, Literary Theory and Critical Perspectives, Glossary of Literary Terms, Chronological Listing of Authors and Stories.

To celebrate the launch of Quick Reads in 2006, "The Sun" ran a short story competition called 'Get Britain Reading' in order to find the hidden talent among its ten million readers. There was a remarkable response, with hilarious, moving and powerful stories pouring in. The Sun Book of Short Stories contains a selection of the winning entries. Short and highly accessible stories. (95 pages)
Level: C

A collection of post-millennium short stories:
This anthology is a collection of post-millennium short stories exploring a sense of awakening or of reaching a turning point. There are five themed sections: Colliding worlds; Growing up; Meetings with death; Home and school and The world of adults. There are stories by Helen Dunmore, Jackie Kay, Matthew Kneale, Helen Simpson, Colm Toibin, Rose Tremain and many others. Editor: David A. Hill.  (232 pages)
Level: Material for all levels of the gymnasium, especially the beginning

Contents: 1. Colliding worlds: Pills, Matthew Kneale; My Polish Teacher's Tie, Helen Dunmore; Coloured Lights, Leila Aboulela. 2. Growing up: When the Wasps Drowned, Clare Wigfall; Lentils and Lilies, Helen Simpson; Will's Story, Julia Green; Lilac, Helen Dunmore; A Summer Job, Colm Toibin. 3. Meetings with death: The Pearce Sisters, Mick Jackson; The Chain, Donald Paterson; Waving at Trains, Matthew Davey; The Dead Are Only Sleeping, Rose Tremain; The Scream, Echo Freer; Visiting Time, Emma Brockes. 4. Home and school: The Boy Who Fell Asleep, Mick Jackson; There's a Hole in Everything, Mark Illis; Tuesday Lunch, Leila Aboulela; Butterfly, Preethi Nair. 5. The world of adults: Seasons, Matthew Kneale; Peerless, Rose Tremain; The Beast, Philip O Ceallaigh; Blinds, Jackie Kay; The Tree, Helen Simpson.

Actvities: For each text: Before you read; What's it about?; Thinking about the text?; Introduction; Further Reading; English glosses. For each section: Compare and contrast. Notes on authors.

Contents: a) Printable, editable support material (including lesson plans and differentiated worksheets); b) A large selection of multimedia support material (such as photographs and audio clips). This Teachers' Resource CD-ROM explores the sense of reawakening in post-millenium short stories. For use both with interactive whiteboards and on individual computers.

This is a collection of stories on the theme of “Hidden London”, uncovering little-known aspects of a diverse city — featuring six stories by previously unpublished Londoners, together with work by prominent London authors Diran Adebayo, Nicola Barker, Romesh Gunesekera, Hanif Kureishi, Sarah Hall, Andrea Levy, Patrick Neate and Alex Wheatle. Each of these fourteen stories expresses a different mood and aspect of the city. Paul T. Owen’s story begins after a Harlesden shooting. He takes us through alleyways, barbershops and seedy pubs in search of clues. Humane characters give this grim tale a note of hope. Saeed Taji Farouky leads us into the stale multiplexes and greasy kitchens where illegal migrants earn a crust, outlining the moral dilemmas they face. Shereen Pandit exposes the tensions underlying multicultural London in the space of a bus journey. Hanif Kureishi offers a run-in between a son and his dead father. Nicola Barker describes a 3-way showdown in a chemist’s. Andrea Levy depicts a woman’s conflicted desire to help a homeless refugee. Diran Adebayo describes a first date in central London, taking swipes aloing the way at trendies, C-list celebs and Shoreditch bohemians. Sarah Hall’s lyrical tale of a woman seeking exile from her past reveals London as a place of refuge, convalescence and transformation. A mixed but interesting collection with some good material. (199 pages)
Level: C-A

A collection of high quality and teachable short stories by some of the finest modern writers, such as: Bradbury, Dahl, Cheever, MacLaverty, Greene, Sillitoe, Weldon and Gordimer. What really makes this anthology stand out is the wide range of assignments that follow each story: Close study of the text, close study of the main characters, organising material for an essay, roleplay, letter writing, newspaper reports and many others. (252 pages)
Level: C

This is an international selection of 15 short stories by major modern writers including Peter Carey, Zadie Smith and Bernard Malamud. Featuring the theme of difference, each story has something to say about cultural encounters, often arising from experiences of migration or uprooting. Biographical introduction to each story. Editor: Lynn Prescott. (296 pages)
Level: 2nd year of Gymnasium/B

Contents: The Ultimate Safari (Nadine Gordimer); In Cuba I was a German Shepherd (Ana Menéndez); The Joy Luck Club (extract) (Amy Tan); What Do You Do in San Francisco? (Raymond Carver); Mr Sumarsono (Roxana Robinson); The Last Mohican (Bernard Malamud); The End of the World (Mavis Gallant); The Distant Past (WilliamTrevor); American Dreams (Peter Carey); Bella Makes Life (Lorna Goodison); Martha, Martha (Zadie Smith); Pit Strike (AllanSillitoe); Storm Petrel (Romesh Gunesekera); Squatter (Rohinton Mistry); One Out of Many (V.S.Naipaul).