Also of interest… in new short fiction

Our Strangers by Lydia Davis (Bookshop Editions, $26)

Every new Lydia Davis story collection “serves up little epiphanies in shot glass–size portions,” said Heller McAlpin in NPR.org. Her first in 10 years packs 150-plus micro tales into 300 pages. In one, a woman on a train overhears an annoying conversation; in the longest story, we glimpse strangers’ lives solely through classified notices they post online. You won’t wish for more incident. “That’s the thing about Davis: Even when life isn’t so fascinating, she finds its very lack of excitement fascinating.”

This Is Salvaged by Vauhini Vara (Norton, $27)

In her first story collection, recent Pulitzer finalist Vauhini Vara “confronts profound loss with a light hand,” said Meena Venkataramanan in The Boston Globe. The author of The Immortal King Rao dedicates this slim book to a sister who died of cancer and fills it with stories in which the human body is comically needy and vulnerable. Vara’s unadorned style “calls to mind Ernest Hemingway.” Here, it fuels a book that “boldly asks: How, despite life’s indignities, do we make meaning from it?”

Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf, $27)

Jhumpa Lahiri remains, in whatever language she chooses, one of our most exciting writers, said Lily Meyer in The New York Times. For her new story collection, the author of Interpreter of Maladies wrote in Italian before she and a second translator converted the text to English, and the result is elegant prose that’s “at times so direct it can be agonizing.” Most of the nine stories focus on foreigners living in Rome, and their varied experiences coalesce into “a deeply moving whole.”

Out There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele (Random House, $30)

This new horror anthology “satisfies the seasonal need for scary,” said Liz Braswell in The Wall Street Journal. More than that, though, it brings together “a veritable who’s who of Black writers in genre fiction,” resulting in a collection that often puts a horror spin on historic or present-day Black experiences. Actor and filmmaker Jordan Peele gathered 19 contributions, and while there’s “nary a bad one in the bunch,” Lesley Nneka Arimah’s standout tale “genuinely scared me.”