The test of time

There’s probably no better recommendation for getting a book than its ranking as a best-seller.  For while readers’ recommendations and critics’ choices are useful indicators, a book’s commercial success is hard to refute. Here then are some best-selling short-story collections that continue to sell – in some cases, decades after their first publication. 1. King of Horror Stephen King’s The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015) is King's sixth short-story collection comprising 20 stories set across 495 pages which won 2015’s prestigious Shirley Jackson Award for best collection. 2. Prophet of the Space Age Arthur C. Clarke’s The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, contains 116 stories across 955 pages. Essentially a sci-fi fest, it was first published in 2001. 3. Southern-Gothic specialist Flannery O'Connor's The Complete Stories (21 tales printed over 556 pages) won the 1972 US National Book Award for Fiction. This collection includes Judgment Day, the last story she wrote. 4. English Mistress of Mystery, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories – first printed in 1985 and reprinted no less than 10 times in hardcover and paperback since then - contains 20 stories which were written between 1927 and 1954. The fact is, the appeal of these short stories has proved to be timeless.