sophia_sol | themed short story recs

This is a list of 22 short story recs for

forestofglory! You might also enjoy them if you are interested in female-focused stories from the last 5 years that are interested in human connection and/or material culture, and usually have a hopeful mood.

Little Free Library, by Naomi Kritzer

Meigan built her Little Free Library from a kit, because she wanted to make it into art. She sanded the wood and painted it with primer, then glued on the rocks she’d picked up from the Lake Superior shore over the summer and used acrylics to paint indigo swirls around them. When she mounted it on the post outside her St. Paul house, she decided to paint the post, too, and painted a fuchsia road, winding around the post to the box at the top, and outlined the road in smaller pebbles. There was a little bit of glitter in the fuchsia craft paint, and she decided that the book cabinet should have some of that, as well. Finally she screwed on the sign that said “Little Free Library” with the instructions: take a book, return a book.

Haunted House, by Elizabeth Wein

Sandy Nissley was the youngest of five children, and by the time she was ready for high school her father was retired. The Nissleys’ large old early twentieth century duplex at Twenty-Four-Twelve North Second Street had become three bedrooms and a whole storey too big for them, and Sandy’s parents decided to move into something a lot smaller. They weren’t going far, and Sandy would be closer to her school. The change didn’t turn Sandy’s world on its head. But she dreamed about the house she’d grown up in.

Martian Cinema, by Gabriela Santiago

Mara took us down into the caves because we were bored, and because she was the oldest so it was her job to figure out what to do when me and Kay were bored. No one had found a new hiding place for Hide and Seek in three years, and all the board games in the game room were either for grown-ups or babies, and we weren’t allowed to play Hiding From The Martians anymore.

Shaina Rubin Keeps Her Head Under Circumstances Nobody Could Have Expected, by Rebecca Fraimow

It wasn’t even my idea to sneak out to the Yiddish theater, that unlucky night I’m telling you about. It was my friend Gittel who really wanted to go. She’s always saying she’s going to do something wild like run away with an actor, so in fact it was a mitzvah for me to say I would go with her and make sure she didn’t do anything foolish—but you just try explaining good sense like that to anyone in my house, especially my cousin Bluma.

Miss Beulah’s Braiding and Life Change Salon, by Eden Royce

The chime above my shop door rings. It heralds a young woman wearing a head wrap boasting a network of silvery constellations on indigo, interspersed with the occasional yellow-gold moon. The wrap itself is made of silk—not the finest grade, mind you, but sufficient to conceal what she must see as a fault. None of her hair is visible, but the contorted celestial bodies show the fabric is at the end of its tether.

Exile’s End, by Carolyn Ives Gilman

The series of events that would make Rue Savenga the most reviled woman on Sarona began only minutes before closing time at the Orofino Museum.

The windows had been rain-streaked all day, and now had gone dark. Rue was at her desk, reading a new art history treatise she needed to review, when her wristband chimed.

“There is a gentleman here asking to see you,” the guard at the front desk said. “He says he’s come from Radovani.”

Heard, Half-Heard, in the Stillness, by Iona Datt Sharma

Ekta’s Dadi could tell the future. She didn’t read the tea leaves, or make horoscope charts, or lay bets on the cricket. But she booked the photographer the week before the news came of Purnima Didi’s engagement. She told the panditji to get his blood pressure checked before he told anyone he was short of breath. The day before the Human Spaceflight Programme was suspended, she called Ekta in Sriharikota and said she should come home.

Laws of Impermanence, by Kenneth Schneyer

It is said that Archimedes was asked by the King of Syracuse to authenticate a manuscript. King Hiero had received what purported to be Alexander of Macedon’s own copy of the Iliad, brought out from the Library at Alexandria itself. He sent envoys to Egypt to ask whether Alexander’s Iliad had indeed ever been housed there, and whether it was now gone missing. In the meanwhile, he hoped that Archimedes could shorten the task by assessing the provenance of the scrolls by inspection.

When Your Being Here is Gentler Than Your Absence Hard, by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko

You’ve lived this all before.

That’s the thought that keeps me going, through the acrid sting of mage-smoke in my nostrils and the terror of almost having lost you already. There’s fear on your face, too—you’re only now straightening, one trembling hand clutching at your sleeve, and—and—no. I find I cannot call this woman you. You look older than your years, your hair streaked with silver. This woman is barely thirty. She does not have your easy calm; she flinches at the sight of the Tierran assassin pinned neatly to the floor by my sword. She is not you, and will not be for years to come.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, by Rebecca Fraimow

Students were marching that day through the center of the city, protesting a new law for the housing of prisoners’ souls. The young person who organized the march had written a very earnest note imploring Sor Ana to join them and speak against the proposal. Naturally, she had refused. A holy sister who had renounced the world outside the cloister could not very well turn around and play figurehead to a secular political movement. But politics was one thing, and personal opinion another, and so on the day of the march she left the Holiest House to go out to the city and watch the protesters pass by; it seemed the very least she could do.

A Farce to Suit the New Girl, by Rebecca Fraimow

It’s a disaster,” said Ida Glickl, head in hands. “To leave St. Petersburg before we’ve even had a chance to recoup our costs --”

“We’re leaving?” said Chava-Leah.

“-- and Goldfaden will hear the news, of course, so he’ll turn back before he gets here, and no doubt will beat us back to Odessa with ‘Two Kuni-Lemls’ –”

“But why are we leaving?” said Chava-Leah.

“And when I think how we raced to get here before him, and how many shows we missed! We’ll make it all back in St. Petersburg, says Chaim! – oh, you haven’t heard?” Ida raised her head, shoving her luxurious hair back from her face. “The Tsar’s been killed. So the theaters have been closed, and they say there was a Jew involved, so of course the news for us will only get worse. You must start packing up the costumes, darling, as quick as you can – oh, and here I almost forgot what I came down here to tell you to begin with! There’s a new girl who’ll be coming with us when we leave St. Petersburg this evening, we’ll have her as Libenyu in Two Kuni-Lemls if we ever get a chance to perform it. I’ll send her down today so you can get her measurements before we go. We’ll need the costume altered for her, but of course that will be no trouble for you and your clever fingers. Bless you, Chava-libte, for being my rock!

The Spoil Heap, by Fiona Moore

Up on the spoil heap Morag found a robot. This wasn’t that unusual in and of itself. She was always finding them, or parts of them anyway, frozen in contorted attitudes like dinosaur fossils, plastic housing cracked and aluminum limbs splayed.

What was different about this one was that it was walking.

Morag would go up the spoil heap two or three times a week, as a way of supplementing what she got from her farm. She was a lot slower going up than when she’d been a young woman, but she was still fitter and stronger than most, and, if she brought a stick with her, it was more to poke about in the buddleia growths than to lean on.

Her Suffering, Pretty and Private, by Aimee Ogden

There were two out-of-towners gawking at Adalène’s window when she sat down alone at the table in her shop.

She’d had a pair of seamstresses to work for her, once upon a time, to do all the fussier piecing and hand-sewing. Sacred seas, she’d had customers once, too. A hundred years’ sleep had changed those things and so many more besides. She frowned down at the piecework for the simple gown she’d laid out and fitted pale-pink thread to a needle. It felt silly, some days, to set to sewing. But her feet always carried her here, to the work table.

Scattered Along the River of Heaven, by Aliette de Bodard

(special note to forest: this one is inspired by Tang era poets!)

This is the first poem Xu Anshi gave to us; the first memory she shared with us for safekeeping. It is the first one that she composed in High Mheng—which had been and remains a debased language, a blend between that of the San-Tay foreigners, and that of the Mheng, Anshi’s own people.

The Year Without Sunshine, by Naomi Kritzer

During one of the much smaller disasters that preceded the really big disaster, I met a lot of my neighbors online. I can’t remember if we set up the WhatsApp group because of the pandemic or the civil disorder or both. My Minneapolis block had always been reasonably friendly—people would take their kids around on Halloween, and I knew the names of my next-door neighbors—but everyone on the WhatsApp group got closer.

The Long Mural, by James Van Pelt

You really do a nice bird,” said Hua from her stepstool above Chimalus. He noticed a strand of black hair sticking to her cheek. She brushed it with the back of her hand which left a brown streak matching the branch she worked on.

“It’s tough to get the tailfeathers right,” Chimalus said. “My name means Bluebird. Did you know that?

Black Are The Waters, by Ten Tzeng

According to the ways, when the head of a household passed away, his womenfolk had to refrain from lifting their feet in dance and their voices in song until the moon cast its full light down for the third time. During that interval, which, to be clear, could be three months, the mourners remained cloistered in their home and performed ritual ablutions to cleanse themselves of death, while their family and friends slowly entombed them within walls of food containers and condolence cards.

When her mom asked Oona to join her in observing this ancient duty, Oona said nah. The explosion that followed was totally understandable, but through it all Oona remained immovable and flippant.

There’s a Door to the Land of the Dead in the Land of the Dead, by Sarah Pinsker

The far stall in the ladies room in the Land of the Dead was backed up again. The day had already started terribly, with an email that hit my phone as I walked the 387 steps from my staff cabin to the front desk, an email from Lana saying Vera, I wanted you to find out directly from me that I’ve started seeing somebody. Call if you want to talk.

An Intergalactic Smuggler's Guide to Homecoming, by Tia Tashiro

There are seven hundred aliens hidden in Miko’s backpack, and the Galactic Security Agent currently studying her passport (hopefully) has no clue. The agent is an alien themselves, some tentacular species with assistive devices hooked into its uniform to mist its soft skin every few seconds. A puff of evaporated solution exits from one of the devices by its neck as it draws her passport closer to its pitted eyes.

Between Blades by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko

The sand underfoot was still fresh with ripples where it had been raked to hide the blood. The sea rushed in over Leris’s feet, the wave in the water meeting the waves in the sand and smoothing out, inch by inch, the remaining evidence of the first bout.

“Ready?”

It was the first word Gerthe had spoken all day. The sun was just shy of its peak, bearing down on the spectators and the competitors in equal measure. It would have been different, in a proper amphitheatre: the two pairs of combatants would have regarded each other from the shaded safety of the tunnels, sizing the others up and taking the time to discuss strategy. But this was the archipelago, and one of the rimward isles besides, and the closest amphitheatre was a week’s sail away on Leshin. Here there was nothing but a patch of sand, bounded on one side by temporary wooden stands and on the other by the ocean.

Signs of Life, by Sarah Pinsker

If you were to drive to my sister Violet’s house today, you would find yourself at a very different place from the one I encountered on my first trip. The road up the mountain has been paved, for one thing, to make it more accessible to the tourists who now support it. Back then if you were behind the wheel of anything other than a farm truck, you were as likely to wreck an axle or lose a tire to the ruts; not knowing, I’d driven the Jag that day.

Linden Honey, Blackcurrant Wine, by M.R. Robinson

When Irena was young and strong and still the third-most beautiful girl in Březina, she could walk from her mother’s cottage to the birch grove in only an hour—even if she stopped to cool her feet in the creek or fill a basket with blackcurrants. But she is not so young and not so strong now, not for all her wishing, and the journey eats up the morning and a slice of afternoon, too.