Also of interest...in short fiction

Dear Life

by Alice Munro (Knopf, $27)

At 81, “the greatest living short-story writer in the English language” is still improving, said Charles McNulty in the Los Angeles Times. Alice Munro’s latest tales are shorter and more quick-paced than ever.But “the austere Lake Huron setting” hasn’t changed, nor has Munro’s genius “for selecting details that keep unfolding in the reader’s mind.” The final four stories, which Munro says contain “the first and last—and closest—things” she has to say about her own life, are alone worth the book’s price.

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The Unreal and the Real

by Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer, $24)

“A century from now, people will still be reading the fantasy stories of Ursula Le Guin with joy and wonder,” said Damien Walter in The Guardian (U.K.). This new two-volume collection showcases the “full diversity” of her work. The first volume collects Le Guin’s realist and magical realist stories, while the second focuses on the stories often derided as genre sci-fi. Yet these “employ the fantastic to step past the confusion of the mind and appeal directly to the heart.”

Astray

by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown, $26)

Readers of Emma Donoghue’s blockbuster Room will recognize the “visceral power” of that novel in these short stories, said Heller McAlpin in The Washington Post. They’re based on real-life tales of historical wanderers—people who strayed across boundaries both physical and moral. Whether she’s in 1776 New Jersey or 1850s London, Donoghue slips easily into each period, while never letting go her signature preoccupations—“with captivity, sexual predation, prostitution, and the grip of parenting.”

Blasphemy

by Sherman Alexie (Grove, $27)

Sherman Alexie’s latest story collection couldn’t be more aptly titled, said Mona Moraru in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. For some 20 years, the American Indian writer has seemed to delight in “knocking down” stereotypes. In these 31 stories, both new and old, we walk in the shoes of various Native Americans both on and off “the rez,” but their concerns are universal. When Alexie adopts a woman’s perspective, he generally isn’t his freewheeling self, but his characters are consistently lovable.