10 Free Stories by George Saunders, Author of Tenth of December, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

For writ­ers and seri­ous read­ers, George Saun­ders is any­thing but a new­com­er. Saun­ders pub­lished his first short sto­ry with The New York­er back in 1992, and his new sto­ries have reg­u­lar­ly debuted in the mag­a­zine’s Fic­tion sec­tion ever since. Over the years, he has gained the rep­u­ta­tion of being a “writer’s writer,” with authors like Tobias Wolff say­ing about Saun­ders: “He’s been one of the lumi­nous spots of our lit­er­a­ture for the past 20 years.” But despite his lit­er­ary accom­plish­ments, and despite win­ning the pres­ti­gious MacArthur award in 2006, George Saun­ders nev­er quite became a house­hold name until Jan­u­ary 6 of this year. On that day, The New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle with the title, “George Saun­ders Has Writ­ten the Best Book You’ll Read This Year,” a pret­ty bold dec­la­ra­tion giv­en that 2013 still had 359 days to go. Since then, Saun­ders has found him­self in the lime­light talk­ing about Tenth of Decem­ber, his new­ly-pub­lished col­lec­tion of short sto­ries. You can watch him give a read­ing at Google above, or make appear­ances on the PBS News Hour and The Col­bert Report.

If you’re not famil­iar with Saun­ders’ writ­ing, then we have you cov­ered. Below we’ve col­lect­ed 10 sto­ries by the author, all free to read online. Even bet­ter, the list fea­tures three sto­ries from Tenth of Decem­ber, includ­ing the sto­ry after which the book takes its name. All sto­ries from the new col­lec­tion have an aster­isk next to the title.

• The Sem­pli­ca-Girl Diaries * — New York­er, Octo­ber 2012
• Tenth of Decem­ber * — New York­er, Octo­ber 2011
• The Red Bow  — Esquire, April 2009
• Pup­py * — New York­er, May 2007
• Comm­Comm — New York­er, August 2005
• Bohemi­ans — New York­er, Jan­u­ary 2004
• Adams — New York­er, August 2004
• Jon — New York­er, Jan­u­ary 2003
• Sea Oak — Barcelona Review, 2000
• A Lack of Order in the Float­ing Object Room — North­west Review, 1986

Relat­ed Con­tent

George Saun­ders Extols the Virtues of Kind­ness in 2013 Speech to Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty Grads

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 11 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

375 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook