36 Under 200
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As a self-proclaimed lover of short books (and sometimes scaredy-cat of long books), here is a list of the best short books I’ve read.
Some caveats for the list: I featured authors only once on this list, so there are no repeats and only the first books in a series. I also only put in one graphic novel (I felt I needed a whole other list for recommendations for manga and graphic novels), and there are a few plays and poetry books here.
Here is my playlist of this list.
No Olive Branch for Me by Natasha Alterici, Nadia Shammas
13 pages
Short comic, nonfiction, impactful
Summary:
“No Olive Branch for Meoriginally started out as a short story drawn by Natasha Alterici (HEATHEN) for charity anthology THE GOOD FIGHT. “
Mary Ventura and the ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath
40 pages
Short story, details, essence of magic
Summary:
“Lips the colour of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like 'guilt, and guilt, and guilt': these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom.
'But what is the ninth kingdom?' she asks a kind-seeming lady in her carriage. 'It is the kingdom of the frozen will,' comes the reply. 'There is no going back.'”
Diminishing by Allison Nicole
48 pages
Poetry, memories, love
Summary:
“A woman hangs her memories to dry, stitches sentiments in fraying quilts, and wanders forgotten halls looking for herself as her self fades from within, burdened with dementia and nostalgia for people she can no longer remember. This is the story of a woman decaying within the grave of her own body.
Diminishing is a long-form poem that explores dementia and memory loss not just through the text but through the visual form as well. As the poem progresses, memories go out of focus, fragment, and eventually fade completely from the page. It is a project that re-centers poetic form in the modern, digital age and adapts in a world where scrolling is seldom interrupted to read.”
Ink: A Memoir by Kathleen Pfeiffer
50 pages
Chapbook, memoir, family
Summary:
"In INK, Kathleen Pfeiffer delves into loss and grief, hope and survival with controlled reflection and wisdom. Her prose is engaging for its sharp and pristine imagery, nostalgic description, and revelatory dialogue. This memoir will resonate with anyone seeking explanations for the unexplainable and closure for heartache that never stopped hurting."
A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert
56 pages
Reflective, short story, acceptance
Summary:
“'She decided she would teach him to speak and he was very soon able to say, 'Pretty boy!', 'Your servant, sir!' and 'Hail Mary!'' With pathos and humour, Flaubert imagines the unexamined life of a servant girl.”
A Tempest by Aimé Césaire
69 pages
Play, retelling, reflective
Summary:
“Césaire's rich and insightful adaptation of The Tempest draws on contemporary Caribbean society, the African-American experience and African mythology to raise questions about colonialism, racism and their lasting effects.”
The Balloonist by Eula Biss
72 pages
Chapbook, nonfiction, essays
Summary:
"Eula Biss writes in spare brushstrokes that evoke an emotional universe, by turns funny, scary, dreamlike, haunting. These prose poems are shards of gleaming observation, fragments of intimacy and illusion. Here we find our families and ourselves, our words and our silences"-Martin Espada. "With deceptively quiet, unflinching compassion, Eula Biss records the perceptual wedges that cleave the self from its origins. The family history refracted here is mutable, notable, more gravid than grave. THE BALLOONISTS holds a fresh line on confession, biography, and the formal uses of information in poetry".”
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
74 pages
Science fiction, finding yourself, family
Summary:
“Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.
Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.
If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself -- but first she has to make it there, alive.”
The Convert by Danai Gurira
88 pages
Play, religion, colonialism
Summary:
“A young Shona girl escapes an arranged marriage by converting to Christianity, becoming a servant and student to an African Evangelical. As anti-European sentiments spread throughout the native population, she is forced to choose between her family's traditions and her newfound faith.”
Foster by Claire Keegan
92 pages
Contemporary fiction, family, finding love
Summary:
“It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household--where everything is so well tended to--and this summer must soon come to an end.”
The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada
92 pages
Weird, Magical realism, identity
Summary:
“Asa's husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family's home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for work, and tries to find interesting ways of killing time.
One day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole--a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. This is the first in a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape filled with eccentric characters and unidentifiable creatures, leading her to question her role in this world, and eventually, her sanity.”
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
99 pages
Classic, relationships, destiny
Summary:
“Set against the frozen waste of a harsh New England winter, Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is a tale of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual tensions, published with an introduction and notes by Elizabeth Ammons in Penguin Classics. Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie's vivacious cousin enters their household as a 'hired girl', Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.”
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
106 pages
Nonfiction, essays, memoir
Summary:
“The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two "letters, " written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. “
Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn
107 pages
Fantasy, mythology, sea
Summary:
“Survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous beasts circle. Their fangs are sharp.
Among the refugees is Iraxi: ostracized, despised, and a commoner who refused a prince, she's pregnant with a child that might be more than human. Her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine.”
Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
108 pages
Fantasy, vampires, lgbtqia
Summary:
“In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest – the beautiful Carmilla. So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her mysterious, entrancing companion.”
Minor Details by Adania Shibli
112 pages
Historical, Dispossession, Brutality in occupation
Summary:
“Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba--the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people--and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand.
Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder, and becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly twenty-five years to the day before she was born.”
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
121 pages
Horror, mystery, Haunting
Summary:
”The Turn of the Screw … tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something, or someone, malevolent is stalking the children in her care. Is the threat to her young charges really a malign and ghostly presence, or a manifestation of something else entirely?”
Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
121 pages
Fantasy, stories, lgbtqia
Summary:
“A young royal from the far north, is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.
Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for. “
The Employees by Olga Ravn
125 pages
Science Fiction, weird, humanity and artificial
Summary:
”The Employees chronicles the fate of the interstellar Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids.”
At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop
145 pages
Historical, war, revenge
Summary:
“Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man who, never before having left his village, finds himself fighting as a so-called "Chocolat" soldier with the French army during World War I. When his friend Mademba Diop, in the same regiment, is seriously injured in battle, Diop begs Alfa to kill him and spare him the pain of a long and agonizing death in No Man's Land.
Unable to commit this mercy killing, madness creeps into Alfa's mind as he comes to see this refusal as a cruel moment of cowardice. Anxious to avenge the death of his friend and find forgiveness for himself, he begins a macabre ritual: every night he sneaks across enemy lines to find and murder a blue-eyed German soldier, and every night he returns to base, unharmed, with the German's severed hand. At first his comrades look at Alfa's deeds with admiration, but soon rumors begin to circulate that this super soldier isn't a hero, but a sorcerer, a soul-eater. Plans are hatched to get Alfa away from the front, and to separate him from his growing collection of hands, but how does one reason with a demon, and how far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend?”
We have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
146 pages
Horror, haunted, mystery
Summary:
”Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.”
A Psalm for the Wild-built by Becky Chambers
147 pages
Science Fiction, Lgbtqia, finding purpose
Summary:
“It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.
One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered.”
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
148 pages
Classic, mother/daughter relationships, bildungsroman
Summary:
”An adored only child, Annie has until recently lived an idyllic life. She is inseparable from her beautiful mother, a powerful presence, who is the very center of the little girl's existence. Loved and cherished, Annie grows and thrives within her mother's benign shadow. Looking back on her childhood, she reflects, "It was in such a paradise that I lived."
When she turns twelve, however, Annie's life changes, in ways that are often mysterious to her. She begins to question the cultural assumptions of her island world; at school she instinctively rebels against authority; and most frighteningly, her mother, seeing Annie as a "young lady," ceases to be the source of unconditional adoration and takes on the new and unfamiliar guise of adversary.”
People From my Neighbourhood by Hiromi Kawakami
159 pages
Short stories, magic, strange
Summary:
“A bossy child who lives under a white cloth near a tree; a schoolgirl who keeps doll's brains in a desk drawer; an old man with two shadows, one docile and one rebellious; a diplomat no one has ever seen who goes fishing at an artificial lake no one has ever heard of. These are some of the inhabitants of People from My Neighborhood.”
The White Book by Han Kang
160 pages
Poetry, grief, family
Summary:
”While on a writer's residency, a nameless narrator focuses on the color white to creatively channel her inner pain. Through lyrical, interconnected stories, she grapples with the tragedy that has haunted her family, attempting to make sense of her older sister's death using the color white. From trying to imagine her mother's first time producing breast milk to watching the snow fall and meditating on the impermanence of life, she weaves a poignant, heartfelt story of the omnipresence of grief and the ways we perceive the world around us.”
The Baltimore Book of the Dead by Marion Winik
160 pages
Nonfiction, essays, life and death
Summary:
”Approaching mourning and memory with intimacy, humor, and an eye for the idiosyncratic, the story starts in the 1960s in Marion Winik's native New Jersey, winds through Austin, Texas, and rural Pennsylvania, and finally settles in her current home of Baltimore.
Winik begins with a portrait of her mother, the Alpha, introducing locales and language around which other stories will orbit: the power of family, home, and love; the pain of loss and the tenderness of nostalgia; the backdrop of nature and public events. From there, she goes on to create a highly personal panorama of the last half century of American life.”
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
163 pages
Fiction, Reflective, Class
Summary:
”The English-language debut of one of Japan's most talented contemporary writers, selling over 650,000 copies there, Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of "Smile Mart," she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction--many are laid out line by line in the store's manual--and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a "normal" person excellently, more or less. Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It's almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action...”
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
165 pages
Fiction, Lighthearted, women in society
Summary:
“‘Lorelei Lee is just a little girl from Little Rock who takes the world by storm to teach its gentlemen that kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever.’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes follows Lorelei and her best friend, Dorothy, from Hollywood to Manhattan to Paris and London, pursued by eager suitors all the while. In "the Central of Europe, " with a new diamond tiara in her handbag, Lorelei meets a traveling American millionaire who just might be the one.”
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
165 pages
Short vignettes, magical realism, cities and how they’re shaped
Summary:
“In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo--Tartar emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts the emperor with tales of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. Soon it becomes clear that each of these fantastic places is really the same place.”
Passing by Nella Larsen
179 pages
Classic, Race, Place in society
Summary:
”Clare Kendry is living on the edge. Light-skinned, elegant, and ambitious, she is married to a racist white man unaware of her African American heritage, and has severed all ties to her past after deciding to "pass" as a white woman. Clare's childhood friend, Irene Redfield, just as light-skinned, has chosen to remain within the African American community, and is simultaneously allured and repelled by Clare's risky decision to engage in racial masquerade for personal and societal gain. After frequenting African American-centric gatherings together in Harlem, Clare's interest in Irene turns into a homoerotic longing for Irene's black identity that she abandoned and can never embrace again, and she is forced to grapple with her decision to pass for white in a way that is both tragic and telling.”
The Professor and the Housekeeper by Yoko Ogawa
180 pages
Math, baseball, found family
Summary:
“He is a brilliant math professor with a peculiar problem--ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.
She is an astute young housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him.
And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor's mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeeper's shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.”
The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
190 pages
Magical realism, mermaids, storytelling
Summary:
“In 1976, David is fishing off the island of Black Conch when he comes upon a creature he doesn't expect: a mermaid by the name of Aycayia. Once a beautiful young woman, she was cursed by jealous wives to live in this form for the rest of her days. But after the mermaid is caught by American tourists, David rescues and hides her away in his home, finding that, once out of the water, she begins to transform back into a woman.
Now David must work to win Aycayia's trust while she relearns what it is to be human, navigating not only her new body but also her relationship with others on the island--a difficult task after centuries of loneliness. As David and Aycayia grow to love each other, they juggle both the joys and the dangers of life on shore. But a lingering question remains: Will the former mermaid be able to escape her curse?”
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut
192 pages
Historical, short stories, descent into fiction
Summary:
“Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger--these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear.”
Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono
193 pages
Magic, middle-grade, bildungsroman
Summary:
“Half-witch Kiki never runs from a challenge. So when her thirteenth birthday arrives, she's eager to follow a witch's tradition: choose a new town to call home for one year.
Brimming with confidence, Kiki flies to the seaside village of Koriko and expects that her powers will easily bring happiness to the townspeople. But gaining the trust of the locals is trickier than she expected. With her faithful, wise-cracking black cat, Jiji, by her side, Kiki forges new friendships and builds her inner strength, ultimately realizing that magic can be found in even the most ordinary places.”
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
195 pages
Science fiction, nature, change
Summary:
”Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for years. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. Expeditions into Area X have ended in disaster or death.
In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the latest expedition. The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and the narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.”
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone
198 pages
Science Fiction, Time travel, love
Summary:
”Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.”