{"id":5277,"count":40,"description":"Short stories are works of fiction that are too short to be published as a standalone novel and where the plot and character development are distilled and to the point. Many great novelists\u2014including Leo Tolstoy and Ernest Hemingway\u2014also wrote short stories, and <a href=\"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/people\/alice-munro\/\">Alice Munro<\/a>, the Canadian writer, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 for her mastery of the genre. The short story collection <em>The Things They Carried<\/em> by Tim O'Brien is often recommended as one of the best books about the Vietnam War; <em>The Periodic Table<\/em> by Primo Levi is a beautiful book about Fascist Italy and Auschwitz.\r\n\r\nHowever, short stories were often written for pure entertainment and also played an important part in the evolution of crime (and other genre) fiction. Starting with \"The Murders in the Rue Morgue\" (1841) by Edgar Allan Poe, many detective stories first appeared in magazines. Agatha Christie wrote some 159 short stories for magazines such as <em>The Sketch; <\/em>most were subsequently published in 16 short story collections in book form. (If you're looking for her best short story, it's unquestionably \"The Witness for the Prosecution,\" her grandson told us).\r\n\r\nFamous short stories for adults recommended on <em>Five Books<\/em> include \"The Fall of the House of Usher\" by Edgar Allan Poe, \"The Death of Ivan Ilyich\" by Leo Tolstoy, and \"Diary of a Madman\" by Lu Xun.\r\n\r\nSee also:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/best-books\/funny-short-stories-cal-flyn\/\">Funny Short Stories<\/a> |\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/best-books\/editors-picks-very-short-books-you-can-read-in-a-day-cal-flyn\/\">Short Books<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/best-books\/short-novels\/\">Short Novels<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/best-books\/novellas-claire-fuller\/\">Novellas<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/best-books\/short-sci-fi-books-karin-tidbeck\/\">Short Sci-Fi Books<\/a> |","link":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/category\/fiction\/short-stories\/","name":"Short Stories","slug":"short-stories","taxonomy":"category","parent":11186,"meta":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/5277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/taxonomies\/category"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/11186"}],"wp:post_type":[{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts?categories=5277"},{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book?categories=5277"},{"href":"https:\/\/fivebooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/books_like_this?categories=5277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}