We all know the feeling of getting sucked into a good book and losing hours curled up on the couch… but life can be busy, and sometimes you just don’t have the time! Short stories are a great way to get in a quick literary fix between study sessions, work & other commitments. Check out some of our newest titles, or browse popular titles by sub-genre below.

“Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.” – Neil Gaiman

New at SURLY

How to Love a Jamaican: Stories – Alexia Arthurs

“There is a way to be cruel that seems Jamaican to me.”

Alexia Arthurs examines the complexities of life in the Jamaican diaspora, painting a portrait of a nation and its people. There’s a world-famous popstar, hiding away in her mother’s home; a mother and son, reuniting for the first time in eight years; a teenaged girl, whose exasperated parents send her to live with her grandmother in Jamaica; a privileged young student, whose upbringing has blinded her to the harsh realities of racism. This vibrant, continent-crossing collection of eleven short follows the lives of Jamaican immigrants from all walks of life, and holds a true fondness for the nation and its people.

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The King Is Always Above the People: Stories – Daniel Alarcón

“Life has a way of punishing brave boys like you. Life has a way of making brave boys like you punish themselves. Particularly here. Where you live. You already know that.”

Migration. Betrayal. Exiles. Family secrets. Doomed love. Uncertain futures. These are stories about people in transition – a young gang member working to find forgiveness and redemption despite a life of violent crime; a man seeking a fresh start in a new city and struggling not to fall into old habits; a man trying to move on after a family crisis. Daniel Alarcón’s collection of short stories delves into the depths of human nature with a sense of urgency and eerie familiarity.

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Meet Me at the Intersection – Rebecca Lim

“Literature without diversity paints a false image of what it is to be human. We invite you into our worlds. Meet us at the intersection.”

This anthology of short stories, poetry and Own Voice memoir explores the unique perspectives of talented authors from diverse backgrounds, including Ellen Van Neerven, Alice Pung, Rebecca Lim, and many more iconic names. Through these stories & poems, First Nations people, People of Colour, LGBT+ people and people living with disability represent themselves through their writing with honesty and creativity.

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Five-Carat Soul – James McBride

“He didn’t look mad, but he didn’t look like Martin Luther King neither.”

James McBride is back in action with a dazzling and exhilarating collection of tales.
Abraham Lincoln visits a stable to grieve his dead son, and overhears an unexpected conversation; a young boy, Abe Lincoln, waits for his father (is his father the President?) to return from war; animals in a zoo discuss their pre-zoo lives, and their philosophies of reincarnation and the order of life. Told with his trademark blend of whimsy and sharp satire, these stories observe the infinite variety of human relationships – and throw in some unexpected narrative surprises too.

Contemporary Fiction

• Birthday Stories: Selected and Introduced by Haruki Murakami
• Difficult Women – Roxane Gay
• Homesick for Another World Stories – Ottessa Moshfegh
• Too Much Happiness – Alice Munro
• The Dinner Party – Joshua Ferris
• Almost Famous Women – Megan Mayhew Bergman
• The Pier Falls – Mark Haddon
• Transactions – Ali Alizadeh
• Close range : Wyoming stories – Annie E. Proulx

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Classics and Retellings

• The Beauties: Essential Stories – Anton Chekhov
• Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece – Stephen Fry
• The Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector – Clarice Lispector
• Collected short stories, Vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3 & vol. 4 – W. Somerset Maugham
• One Thousand and One Nights – Hanan Al-Shaykh
• The Chronicles of the Round Table – Mike Ashley
• A Manual for Cleaning Women : Selected Stories – Lucia Berlin
• 5 bestsellers including 40 Tales of the unexpected – Roald Dahl
• The annotated Sherlock Holmes: The fifty-six short stories, vol. 1 & vol. 2– Arthur Conan Doyle

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Australian Writing

• Dream stuff – David Malouf
• Secret lives : 34 modern Australian short stories – Barry Oakley
• Heatwave: Penguin Australian summer stories, Volume 5
• Heat and Light – Ellen Van Neerven
• Scission – Tim Winton
• The turning – Tim Winton
• Aurealis: Australian fantasy & science fiction no. 27/28 – Stephen Higgins
• That eye, the sky – Tim Winton

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Authors and Stories from Around the World

• Old Land, New Tales : 20 Short Stories by Writers of the Shaanxi Region in China – Chen Zhongshi
• Daughters of Africa: An international anthology of words and writings by women of African descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the present Latin@ Rising: An Anthology of Latin@ Science Fiction and Fantasy – Frederick Luis Aldama
• 没种和有种的男人/ mei zhong he you zhong de nan ren/ Impotent man and potent man – Ben She
• Best Short Stories / Les Meilleures Contes: A Dual-Language Book – Guy De Maupassant
• Les Soirées de Médan (nouvelles)/ Evenings at the Médan (short stories) – Paul Alexis
• The Refugees – Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Tiga cinta, ibu / Three Love, Mother – Gus Tf Sakai
• The Thing Around Your Neck – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Accusation: Forbidden Stories From Inside North Korea – Bandi
• A Reader of Modern Arabic Short Stories – Sabry (Ed.) Hafez

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Magical Realism

• Eva Luna – Isabel Allende
• Nocturnes – John Connolly
• The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night – Jen Campbell
• Get in Trouble: Stories – Kelly Link
• Her Body and Other Parties: Stories – Carmen Maria Machado

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Mystery and Thriller

• Crime wave – James Ellroy
• The Grownup – Gillian Flynn
• To cut a long story short – Jeffrey Archer
• The collected short stories – Jeffrey Archer
• Piranha to scurfy and other stories – Ruth Rendell
• The World’s Greatest Detective Stories – Herbert Van Thal

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Horror

• Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories – Mariana Enriquez
• The Bazaar of Bad Dreams – Stephen King
• Her Body and Other Parties: Stories – Carmen Maria Machado
• Haunted – Chuck Palahniuk
• 999 : New stories of horror and suspense – William Peter Blatty
• New Fears – New Horror Stories by Masters of the Genre – Stephen Gallagher
• Carter & Lovecraft – Jonathan Howard
• Hearts in Atlantis – Stephen King

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Romance

• Geek Out: A Collection of Trans and Genderqueer Romance – Jk Pendragon
• Almost Midnight: Two Short Stories – Rainbow Rowell
• This is how you lose her – Junot Diaz
• Heavenly date and other flirtations – Alexander Mccall Smith
• Love in the Afternoon – Penny Vincent
• Heart of Darkness – Maggie Shayne
• Down the Rabbit Hole – J. D. Robb

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Humour

• Bream Gives Me Hiccups : And Other Stories – Jesse Eisenberg
• Postcards from the bed – Marian Keyes
• Heavenly date and other flirtations – Alexander Mccall Smith
• One More Thing: Stories and other stories – B.J. Novak

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Science Fiction

• Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction – Ken Liu
• Sisters of the Revolution : A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology – Ann Vandermeer
• Tuf voyaging – George R.R. Martin
• Manhattan in Reverse – Peter F. Hamilton
• Pixel juice : Stories from the avant pulp – Jeff Noon
• Carbide Tipped Pens : Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction – Ben Bova
• Machine Learning: New and collected stories – Hugh Howey
• The Web 2028 – Stephen Baxter
• Stories of Your Life and Others – Ted Chiangw
• Tales of ten worlds – Arthur C. Clarke
• The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection – Cixin Liu

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Fantasy and Magic

• A Blink of the Screen: Collected Short Fiction – Terry Pratchett
• The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic – Leigh Bardugo
• Bending the landscape: Fantasy – Nicola Griffith
• Rogues – George R.R. Martin
• Across the Wall: A Tale of the Abhorsen and Other Stories – Garth Nix
• A quest lover’s treasury of the fantastic – Margaret Weis
• To Hold the Bridge: Tales from the Old Kingdom and Beyond – Garth Nix
• Young Warriors : Stories of strength – Tamora Pierce
• The Paper Menagerie & other stories – Ken Liu
• Trigger Warning: Short Fictions & Disturbances – Neil Gaiman

Ebooks and audiobooks – Lots to browse through! Including Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Orson Scott Card, Cassandra Clare, Roald Dahl, Thomas Hardy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, Jackie French, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, R. L. Stine, & more.