Best Religious Fiction Short Stories
From “quite possibly America’s best living writer of short stories” (NPR), Ninety-Nine Stories of God finds Joy Williams reeling between the sublime and the surreal, knocking down the barriers between the workaday and the divine. The figures that haunt these stories range from Kafka (talking to a fish) to the Aztecs, Tolstoy to Abraham and Sarah, O. J. Simpson to a pack of wolves. “[The stories in Ninety-Nine Stories of God ] miniaturize the qualities found in Joy Williams’s celebrated short stories: concision, jumped connections, singular details, brutal humor. I say “celebrated” because Williams has been writing stories for forty years, and for forty years her literary peers―from Ann Beattie to Raymond Carver, from James Salter to Don DeLillo―have regarded her work with a kind of Masonic fellow-feeling. [Williams is] after some big truths in a few words, stories so short that some of them could fit on Twitter, except they're too smart and not mean enough. “ [Williams] is ... a master of momentum ; the stories in Ninety-Nine Stories of God end and snap, end and snap, their wit yanking you up and dressing you down right when you get a rhythm going.”. - The Week. “Read together, Joy Williams’ stories are a humanist manifesto , a celebration of our most mysterious values, desires and prejudices.”. - Huffington Post, Best Fiction of 2016.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Reminds me in form of Sarah Ruhl's 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, only the individual pieces are shorter and even more distilled."
"I think she took full advantage of this opportunity between stories and novels to risk following her muse down a less-traveled creative path."
"I couldn't stop reading this until the end, even though none of the "stories" is much longer than a page or two."
"I wish it were titled otherwise because, as is, it suggests religiosity, which it is not."
"Is God in everything or in our lives at all times?"
"Delightful, witty and wise reflection on some of the best writers of the last half of the previous century."
"Joy Williams' stories are always a treat, polished puzzlers that help keep me alive to the fact that we seldom know completely what's going on."
"A fascinating read and look at a sometimes baffling concept."
Book by Iles, Curt.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"A very delightful and inspiring book."
"Good collection of the stories of people I could have grown up with."
Hailed by Frank O'Connor as one of "the greatest living storytellers," J. F. Powers, who died in 1999, stands with Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Raymond Carver among the authors who have given the short story an unmistakably American cast. J. F. Powers (1917-1999) was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, and studied at Northwestern University while holding a variety of jobs in Chicago and working on his writing.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The first, MORTE D'URBAN, a book I have read and reread at least four times, each time with much chuckling and great enjoyment, won the National Book Award in 1962. The second, WHEAT THAT SPRINGETH GREEN (1988), I read just a few years ago. Again,much chuckling, a pure pleasure to read. The Catholic Church, its clergy and religious, and its faithful members in the mid-twentieth century Midwest. I can remember, as a child, seeing Powers' first book, PRINCE OF DARKNESS AND OTHER STORIES (1947), a slim paperback in a rack of religious books and pamphlets in the back of our church."
"O'Rourke, Dave Barry, Christopher Buckley, and (God-forgive-me) Al Franken are hailed as leading humorists, there are three giants of American humor that are criminally underappreciated: Florence King, Jim Goad, and the late James Farl Powers. Powers is a distinctly different writer, speaking from a different landscape and with a plainness of style that invokes the Midwest and invites comparison with Willa Cather. But as William Faulkner said and wrote, Powers's subjects are circumscribed by "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing." But Powers is gentle, and gives us a kind of catharsis as we follow the bumbling path of flawed souls, venial, petty, and helpless, but not hopeless."
"Love the writing and the characters are real, I just know it."
"master of short fiction ..."
"Powers is just amazing!"
"J.F."
Best Religious Short Stories & Anthologies
A collection of Father Tim's favorite words of wisdom and spiritual inspiration--from the bestselling author of At Home in Mitford and Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good For years, Mitford’s Father Tim Kavanagh has transcribed into his dog-eared journals words of wisdom, faith, and encouragement. Like Patches, this "commonplace book" collects favorite quotations of Karon's protagonist Father Tim on things quotidian and spiritual. Father Tim (and Karon) are nothing if not well read: other sources of wisdom in this slender volume include Thomas Jefferson, George Herbert, Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor, William Shakespeare, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, St. Augustine, Epictetus and Dorothy Sayers.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"A Continual Feast is is full of comfort as noted in title."
"The book was in excellent condition."
"I experience an emotional range of laughter and tears from the daily lives of the. characters in Ms. Karon's books in this series."
"Anything written by Jan Karon is worth the read."
"I haven't had time to get very far in this book yet."
"Anyone who likes small bites of wisdom and humor will enjoy reading this book, which truly is a "continual feast" of words."
"Know this will be near me always."
Best Religious Fiction Anthologies
A collection of Father Tim's favorite words of wisdom and spiritual inspiration--from the bestselling author of At Home in Mitford and Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good For years, Mitford’s Father Tim Kavanagh has transcribed into his dog-eared journals words of wisdom, faith, and encouragement. Like Patches, this "commonplace book" collects favorite quotations of Karon's protagonist Father Tim on things quotidian and spiritual. Father Tim (and Karon) are nothing if not well read: other sources of wisdom in this slender volume include Thomas Jefferson, George Herbert, Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor, William Shakespeare, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, St. Augustine, Epictetus and Dorothy Sayers.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"A Continual Feast is is full of comfort as noted in title."
"The book was in excellent condition."
"I experience an emotional range of laughter and tears from the daily lives of the. characters in Ms. Karon's books in this series."
"Anything written by Jan Karon is worth the read."
"I haven't had time to get very far in this book yet."
"Anyone who likes small bites of wisdom and humor will enjoy reading this book, which truly is a "continual feast" of words."
"Know this will be near me always."