Although I read a variety of genre, I'm quite choosy about what I read in the short form. My preferences also tend towards long short stories and novelettes rather than flash fiction. Over the last few years, I've ruthlessly made the yearly cutoff at twenty-five, but as per the norm many more stories beyond the twenty-five listed deserve praise (I'm also too careful about drawing from anthologies I've had stories published in as I have a natural bias towards these works). This year, I read exactly 100 stories. For me, these 25 stories are the very best of an excellent bunch I read this year.
‘Smother’ Joyce Carol Oates (Give Me Your Heart originally published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Fall 2005)
‘Bluebeard in Ireland’ John Updike (read in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Ed. Kate Bernheimer originally published in The Afterlife and Other Stories)
‘The Mermaid in the Tree’ Timothy Schaffert (read in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Ed. Kate Bernheimer)
‘The Scarecrow’s Brow’ Michael Swanwick (read in Not So Much, Said the Cat. First published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 2008)
‘With this Needle I thee Thread’ Angela Rega (Aurum: A Golden Anthology of Original Australian Fantasy Ed. Russell B. Farr)
‘The Huntsman and the Beast’ Carrie Vaughn (Asimov’s Science Fiction Sep/Oct 2018) (only a slight subversion in terms of switching gender, but at the end of the day, it was an extremely entertaining story and does it really matter how deep and innovative the subversion is?)
‘3-adica’ Greg Egan (Asimov’s Science Fiction Sep/Oct 2018)
‘Shatterglass’ Susan Wardle (Aurum: A Golden Anthology of Original Australian Fantasy Ed. Russell B. Farr)
‘Nowhere’ Joyce Carol Oates (Give Me Your Heart originally published in Dangerous Women ed. Otto Penzler)
‘Strip Poker’ Joyce Carol Oates (Give Me Your Heart originally published in Dead Man’s Hand ed. Otto Penzler)
‘Mesdames’ Naomi J. Williams (Bourbon Penn 31)
‘Lady Brilliana’ Lucy Sussex (Aurum: A Golden Anthology of Original Australian Fantasy Ed. Russell B. Farr)
‘The Story of the Mosquito’ Lily Hoang (read in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Ed. Kate Bernheimer) very simply told Vietnamese fairy tale.
‘The Crucible’ Ian Bassingthwaighte (One Story #266)
‘A Case Study of Emergency Room Procedure and Risk Management by Hospital Staff Members in The Urban Facility’ Stacey Richter (read in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Ed. Kate Bernheimer)
‘Of Finest Scarlet was her Gown’ Michael Swanwick (read in Not So Much, Said the Cat First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 2014)
‘Halfway People’ by Karen Joy Fowler (read in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Ed. Kate Bernheimer)
‘Beautiful’ Juliet Marillier (Aurum: A Golden Anthology of Original Australian Fantasy Ed. Russell B. Farr)
‘Teague O’Kane and the Corpse’ Chris Adrian (read in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Ed. Kate Bernheimer)
‘The Louder I Call, the Faster it Runs’ E. Catherine Tobler (Bourbon Penn 31)
‘I’m Here’ Ludmila Petrushevskaya (read in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Ed. Kate Bernheimer)
‘Ever After’ Kim Addonizio (read in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Ed. Kate Bernheimer. First appeared in Fairy Tale Review: The Blue Issue, 2006)
‘The Brother and the Bird’ Alissa Nutting (read in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Ed. Kate Bernheimer)
‘The Colour Master’ Aimee Bender (read in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Ed. Kate Bernheimer)
‘Body-Without-Soul’ Kathryn Davis (read in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Ed. Kate Bernheimer)
