Stephen Graham Jones' best horror short story collections
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About Stephen Graham Jones
Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author of thirty-five or so novels and collections, and there’s some novellas and comic books in there as well. Most recent are The Buffalo Hunter Hunter and Killer on the Road. Next is Off the Reservation. Stephen lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado. He shared some writing advice on the Fable app as well!About his short story collections
As fans eagerly await Stephen Graham Jones' next book, we caught up with the great author to get some short story recommendations from the Everand catalog.We'll start by sharing the table of contents for each collection. Follow the links below to sample these stories!
The Ones That Got Away (2010)
A woman finds out that the shipwreck wasn't the disaster, but who she's shipwrecked with. A big brother learns just what he will, and won't, trade for one night of sleep.- Father, Son, Holy Rabbit
- Till the Morning Comes
- The Sons of Billy Clay
- So Perfect
- Lonegan's Luck
- Monsters
- Wolf Island
- Teeth
- Raphael
- Captain's Lament
- The Meat Tree
- The Ones Who Got Away
- Crawlspace
After the People Lights Have Gone Off (2014)
In "Doc's Story," even the most beloved family tales have teeth — that's what happens when you're born into a werewolf pack. And a father doesn't have to think twice when he's given one chance to make the ultimate sacrifice in "Snow Monsters."- Thirteen
- Brushdogs
- Welcome to the Reptile House
- This is Love
- The Spindly Man
- The Black Sleeve of Destiny
- The Spider Box
- Snow Monsters
- Doc's Story
- The Dead Are Not
- Xebico
- Second Chances
- After the People Lights Have Gone Off
- Uncle
- Solve for X
Three Miles Past (2024)
"No Takebacks" tracks how an app goes from an idea to coding to letting loose its creator's darkest impulses. And there's nowhere to hide during "The Coming of Night," when a predator's latest kill sets off a creepy-crawly timebomb inside of him.- Interstate Love Affair
- No Takebacks
- The Coming of Night
Which Stephen Graham Jones Stories Should You Read Next?
What to read if you are a fan of The Only Good Indians
Q: For the many fans of The Indian Lake Trilogy and The Only Good Indians in our community, are there any stories or novellas in these collections that they might want to read next?Stephen Graham Jones: I bet "Father, Son, Holy Rabbit" might be the one from these collections that's had the longest legs, the best reach? "Uncle" always makes me nervous. And that "Interstate Love Affair," man. Who even wrote that one? I don't feel evil enough to have.
What to read if you are a fan of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Q: For readers who loved The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, are there any stories or novellas in these collections that they might want to read next?Stephen Graham Jones: Maybe "Brushdogs." But that one also sort of goes well with The Only Good Indians. But, Good Indians and Buffalo are in the same world, so, by the transitive powers of story, I think "Brushdogs" can hang out with both.
What to read if you are a fan of I Was A Teenage Slasher
Q: For fans of I Was A Teenage Slasher, are there any stories or novellas that they might want to read next?Stephen Graham Jones: Teen Slasher's having fun with genre conventions and formulae and tropes and archetypes—with Horror—so, all of these stories and novelettes here, being horror, maybe interface with it at some level? Maybe not so meta, so big-picture. But, it's good to have your feet on the ground sometimes, too. Lets you appreciate the vastness of the sky, the genre, better.
How Stephen Graham Jones’ reading journey began
Q: At Fable, we talk a lot about what we read as kids. Can you tell us about how your journey as a reader began? What books inspired you?Stephen Graham Jones: First novel I read, that was very formative, was Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows. Then I fell into the MacDonald Hall series by Gordon Korman—Bruno and Boots were my heroes. This is all fourth grade, when I’m ten. Somehow, then, I got hold of a copy of Whitley Strieber’s The Wolfen, which changed me forevermore. Then my uncle started sharing his paperbacks with me. That’s where I discovered Louis L’Amour, Conan the Barbarian, and Mack Bolan. I didn’t go for Bolan, but I still love the western, and Conan’s my all-time favorite. Then in junior high, it was science thrillers. Crichton, and all the many, many Crichton knockoffs. In 1988, I found Stephen King, started that long and wonderful journey. In undergraduate, aside from philosophy, my major, it was a lot of Raymond Carver—all the minimalist stuff, really—but also Vonnegut and Nabokov. My first year at grad school, first semester, really, I got introduced to Philip K. Dick, which is a shelf I’ve yet to ever leave. And soon I was to find and lose myself in Thomas Pynchon, Gerald Vizenor, John Barth, David Foster Wallace. The bigger and more difficult the book, the more I wanted to put a notch in something, to show I’d read it. But I also found Louise Erdrich in those years, and she’s been so, so important to who I am as a writer. In the early 2000s, it was everything Alan Moore, and all the science fiction I could dig up that was anything like Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, which I guess is what led me to James SA Corey. My current contemporary writer, writing right now . . . man, that’s tricky. Katherine Arden? Rebecca Roanhorse? Who are both fantasy, yeah. That’s weird, as I don’t write much fantasy, and am a very committed horror writer. Even when I try not to write the bloody stuff, I always find myself walking into the dark all the same. It’s just where I belong. Who knows. What’s that XJ Kennedy poem? “If you would lay well / don’t watch?” I kind of subscribe to that. Just do the work. Don’t think about it too much. There’s nothing worse for writing than thinking.Q: We have many book clubs dedicated to reading banned and challenged books. Has your work ever faced challenges? How did you respond?Stephen Graham Jones: Yeah, some of my stuff’s been banned in this little town, in that library, all around. Not much to do about it. Just keep writing stuff very much against that book-banning mentality. Which is to say, show them to be the actual monsters.Read Stephen Graham Jones on Everand and Fable
Whether you start with the deeply personal stories of The Ones That Got Away, the monster-haunted world of After the People Lights Have Gone Off, or the nightmares of Three Miles Past, Stephen Graham Jones' short fiction is a great addition to your summer reading list.Sign up for a free 30-day trial to Everand, a digital subscription that gives you instant access to millions of bestselling ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more. Start reading on the web, iOS, Android, and even offline.
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