I got this slightly-battered softcover at Savers. I'd enjoyed a previous collection by this editor, The World's Shortest Stories, and thought these might be interesting. And some of them were, though I admit I found most of them a bit lacking in "story", with many feeling more like poems than stories (though one could have a good time debating the difference in a reading group!) and others simply not being very interesting to me.

The ones I liked best tended to have little twists at the end that changed the meaning of the preceding lines. Among these: "Late Charge" by Jennifer Saylor, in which "she loved the way he smelled, the way she held him, her hands caressing his spine..." Yeah, "he" is a library book {grin}. And "Reunion", in which two people who've been flirting madly online discover that they're more closely related than they imagined.

Speaking of twists, "O, Henry!" by Jeffrey Scott Baker is a deliberate homage to the famed O. Henry story "Gifts of the Magi", with a deft extension to that tale: "Her hair will grow back, but my watch is GONE!"

On the darker side, "Plan B" by Doris Parkland would make a dandy mystery-show episode; it's pithy, yet manages to suggest a lot more story than the word-count can cover. "Looking Ahead" by Cheryl L. Leflar is another of these - and this one reminded me of the marvelously creepy book and film Seance on a Wet Afternoon.

I liked some of the "poems," too; "Rainy Night People" by Gregory Moreland was very evocative.

At the end of the book there's a section on how to write a 55-word story, in case you want to try one yourself.

[I noticed that there's a page missing - page 209-210. I tried checking Google books to see if their preview included those pages, but it doesn't. I admit I'm very curious as to which stories are missing - especially good ones, or especially nasty ones?]

I left this book on a sheltered bench in front of the laundromat and liquor store in the plaza at around 2:45 or so; hope the finder enjoys it!

*** Released for the 2014 Spook-tacular Halloween Challenge, for "death". ***

*** Released for the 2014 TICK TOCK release challenge, for "death". ***