In 2021, Gini Alhadeff, author and translator, brought a new concept to the venerable publisher New Directions. What if, she proposed, New Directions published short books—novellas or long stories—as ...

As the saying goes, we all have stories to tell. For some authors, these stories happen to be short. Just as the price tag of a product doesn’t signal its quality, neither does an author’s brevity ...

Discover 7 short books that may take only hours to read but leave deep, lasting lessons that quietly change how you see life.

Good morning and welcome back to the L.A. Times Book Club newsletter. I’m Jim Ruland, a fiction writer, punk historian and a longtime contributor to the Los Angeles Times, and this summer I’ll be ...

For many years, I assumed that the appeal of a short story was that it was, well, short. Instead of slowly reading a novel over weeks, the reader of these bite-size plots can experience character ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Sughnen Yongo is a Midwest writer covering Black women, pop culture. Gabriel García Márquez didn’t just write stories—he created ...

Consider, for a moment, the unforgiving nature of short fiction. Many highly esteemed novels contain stretches that stumble, lumber and digress, with such “fat” either pardoned in the larger context ...