Perry Klass's Love and Modern Medicine: Stories, published in 2001, is a collection of eleven short stories, some very funny, that feature characters struggling to cope with family crises. Many of the protagonists are highly capable women and mothers who find their home lives much more challenging than their work lives. Three stories were O. Henry Award winners.

25 and Under/Fiction, edited by Susan Ketchin and Neil Giordano, presents fifteen short stories—two by Jason Brown—written by new literary voices, all under the age of twenty-five. The 1997 anthology includes stories on belief and religion, heroin and alcoholism, families and madness, and more.

Like Jason Brown's first short-story collection, Ethan Canin's first story collection, Emperor of the Air: Stories, was widely applauded by critics. Canin was in his late twenties and attending medical school when this book was published...