Table of Contents

The Progress of Love

Lichen

Monsieur les Deux Chapeaux

Miles City, Montana

Fits

The Moon in the Orange Street Skating Rink

Jesse and Meribeth

Eskimo

A Queer Streak

Circle of Prayer

White Dump

About the Author

Alice Munro is the author of thirteen collections of stories—including Dear Life, Runaway, and Too Much Happiness—as well as a novel, Lives of Girls and Women. Among the many awards and prizes she received are three Governor General’s Literary Awards and two Giller Prizes in Canada; the Rea Award; the Lannan Literary Award; the National Book Critics Circle Award; and the International Booker Prize. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Alice Munro died in 2024.

Reviews

"One of the foremost contemporary practitioners of the short story.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Alice Munro is a born teller of tales.”—The Washington Post

“Throughout this remarkable collection moments of insight flash from the pages like lightning, not necessarily providing answers—more likely showing the way to new questions.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

The characters in these 11 short stories have hearts that are startled or weighed down by the responsibilities of love, or which are gnawed by hidden hate and cruelty. PW wrote that Munro offers ``a freshness of vision, a breadth of sympathy and a wide-ranging imagination.'' (September)

"One of the foremost contemporary practitioners of the short story."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Alice Munro is a born teller of tales."--The Washington Post

"Throughout this remarkable collection moments of insight flash from the pages like lightning, not necessarily providing answers--more likely showing the way to new questions."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

Praise from fellow writers:

"Her work felt revolutionary when I came to it, and it still does." -Jhumpa Lahiri

"She is one of the handful of writers, some living, most dead, whom I have in mind when I say that fiction is my religion." -Jonthan Franzen

"The authority she brings to the page is just lovely." -Elizabeth Strout

"She's the most savage writer I've ever read, also the most tender, the most honest, the most perceptive." -Jeffery Eugenides

"Alice Munro can move characters through time in a way that no other writer can."-Julian Barnes

"She is a short-story writer who...reimagined what a story can do." -Loorie Moore

"There's probably no one alive who's better at the craft of the short story." -Jim Shepard

"A true master of the form." -Salman Rushdie

"A wonderful writer." -Joyce Carol Oates