Five Skies Short Story Collections
(Note: RC = Recorded Books; BR = Braille; DB = Digital Books)
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Ron Carlson wrote Five Skies, his first novel in thirty years.  A master of the short story, readers and book clubs should not miss his critically acclaimed collections: News of the World (1987); Plan B for the Middle Class (1992), a 1992 NYT Best Book; The Hotel Eden (1997), a NYT Notable Book; At the Jim Bridger (2002), a Los Angeles Times 2002 Best Book; and A Kind of Flying (2003), a compilation of selected stories from his first three collections.

After reading and discussing Ron Carlson’s short stories, consider the following collections as well.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and The Toughest Indian in the Worldby Sherman Alexie - The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven’s twenty-two stories focus on the life on the Spokane Indian Reservation. The tales of Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, convey the humor and passion in life, as well as acknowledge the environment of alcoholism and despair in which many of his people live as they attempt to hold on to traditions.

The Toughest Indian in the World is a collection of nine short stories exploring the concept of Native American identity. In the title piece originally appearing in the New Yorker, a Spokane Indian journalist adopts his father's practice of picking up Indian hitchhikers but carries the tradition farther than intended.

A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You by Amy Bloom
Eight stories about the survivors of stressful situations. In the title piece single-mother Jane accompanies her beloved daughter Jessie for a transsexual operation to become the man she's always wanted to be.

After the Plague and Other Stories by T. C. Boyle - Sixteen short stories about human interactions, many imbued with wry humor. The title piece conveys a survivor's fears upon encountering a few other remaining people after a worldwide epidemic and has a surprise ending.

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler - A Vietnam War translator, Butler remains close to a community of Vietnamese immigrants near New Orleans. The immigrants are the subject of fifteen short stories in which characters narrate tales set in their adopted and their native lands. In the title story, a weary old man prepares his family for his death and imagines himself talking to Ho Chi Minh.

Emperor of the Air by Ethan Canin- A first collection of stories by a young writer with a strong imagination and the ability to draw the reader into the lives of his characters.

The Stories of John Cheever - The 1947 Pulitzer Prize winning collection of sixty-one tales about marriage, suburbia, the middle class, Manhattan, families, theology, and decency. Cheever's preface describes them: "stories of a long-lost world...when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store...when almost everybody wore a hat."

Winter’s Tale by Isak Dinesen - Eleven romantic, symbolic short stories with European themes.

Victory over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist - Short stories of spirited women caught in the straitlaced upper-crust South. Three of the narratives follow Rhoda Manning from her sassy, bright childhood through marriage and divorce. Other stories venture into the wild, sometimes violent household of Miss Crystal, as seen by her maid. Awarded the 1984 American Book Award for fiction.

An Ornithologist’s Guide to Life by Ann Hood - A debut collection of 11 heartfelt stories previously published in literary journals and magazines.  According to the popular Rhode Island author, characters who are observing each other, the changes in their worlds, and beginning to glimpse a different future, are at the heart of each story.

Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies by Rhode Island native Lahiri is the Pulitzer Prize winning collection of short stories capturing the Indian and Indian American experience of people living in, around, and between two cultures. Unaccustomed Earth’s eight short stories explore the nature of family and love. In the title story, a mother in Seattle nervously hosts her widowed father, who helps tend her garden but hides a secret.

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore - Twelve short stories featuring vulnerable women with rueful lives. In "Willing," Sidra, who describes herself as a "minor movie star, once nominated for a major award," is back in Chicago forlornly looking for a normal life. But her parents are uncomfortable around her, and the auto mechanic she dates is not the marrying kind.

Open Secrets and The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro - The characters in Open Secrets are mainly women from small towns in Canada, preoccupied with the men, or lack of them, in their lives. In "Carried Away," Louisa corresponds with a World War I soldier who marries another woman when he comes home from overseas. In the title story, after a girl disappears from a hiking group, no one solves the mystery of whether she ran away or met with foul play. The Love of A Good Woman’s eight short stories center around families. In the title piece, three boys delay revealing their discovery of the drowned town optometrist. Most think it's a suicide until a nurse uncovers the truth. In "My Mother's Dream" a war widow has trouble accepting her newborn daughter while living with her quirky in-laws.

The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami - “The virtuoso Japanese novelist presents 17 playful and darkly comic existentialist conundrums.” Publishers Weekly      Written in the 1980s and published in English in 1993, these stories present a range of materialtold in Murakami's trademark deadpan style, stories of everyday life in modern Japan, featuring twenty- and thirty-somethings who frequently have too much time on their hands.

The Whore’s Child by Richard Russo - Seven stories by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. In the title piece, an elderly nun invades a professor's creative writing class but turns in a memoir, not fiction. The students' critique points out a crucial fact that reveals the nun's misunderstanding of her past.