> ARRIVALS

Short and sweet: The very best work of a veteran American storyteller; a debut book of stories from a B.C. newcomer; a posthumous manifesto from Charlie Hebdo’s late editor and a bracing ethical argument for helping the world’s poor.

For a Little While, Rick Bass

The first thing you need to know about Bass is that he is one of America’s most admired practitioners of the short-story form. For a Little While is a best-of collection. Book reviewers are already shouting their hosannas. The second thing is that he gets around a lot. This new collection reflects all his stops along the way and his abiding connection with the creatures of the natural world.

Cockfosters, Helen Simpson

The British writer’s sixth story collection is a marvelously witty and warm-hearted gathering of nine stories. In “Cockfosters,” two female friends travel to the end of the Piccadilly Line to retrieve an item left on a train. “Torremolinos” features a man in a hospital bed, happy to be alive following cardiac surgery. And so on. She’s a lovely writer and each story in this entertaining collection is as smooth as butter.

Double Dutch, Laura Trunkey

Most of the stories in Trunkey’s first collection are excursions into the offbeat. In the first, “Night Terror,” Nicole, a single mother, discovers her 2-year-old son speaking what sounds like Arabic in his sleep. In “Double Dutch,” Noah, a man who worked as Ronald Reagan’s stand-in, visits the former president in his declining years. You get the idea: a brave and imaginative mind is at work here.

Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression, Charb

In this “open letter,” Stéphane (Charb) Charbonnier, the late editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, explains the gulf between criticizing a religion and inciting hatred of an individual or a group. Charb completed the text in January 2015, two days before he and 10 Charlie staffers were murdered by Islamic fundamentalists.

We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think, Shirley Hazzard Famine, Affluence and Morality, Peter Singer

“Famine, Affluence and Morality” was first published in 1972, after nine million refugees fled East Pakistan to refugee camps in India. In it, Singer argued that affluent individuals are morally obliged to aid people living in extreme poverty, no matter how far away. Today that essay is regarded as a landmark in what has come to be called “ef- fective altruism.” In their foreword, Bill and Melinda Gates observe that the number of people living in extreme poverty today is less than half what it was in the ’70s, so there is cause for watchful optimism. This slender volume also includes two new essays by Singer, including the provocatively titled “What Should a Billionaire Give — and What Should You?”