Amazon’s short story collections are one of the best reasons to own a Kindle
The latest is a diverse slate of whodunits with a fantastical twist.
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Over the last few years, I’ve gradually shifted away from ebooks. It’s been part of a general return to physical media, an attempt to create a deeper sense of ownership over the art I love and collect. A Kindle is obviously more convenient than a paperback: It’s tiny, holds a huge library, and you can purchase new books instantly. But, much like with retro game cartridges , I find there’s a deeper connection formed with a book dug out of a stack in a used book shop versus simply choosing the next thing in a series from a menu on an e-reader. But I haven’t completely given up on my Kindle, and there’s one big reason — actually, there are lots of smaller reasons why.
Amazon’s Original Stories publishing imprint has steadily curated a huge collection of short story collections, which often feature big-name authors and are particularly great if you’re a fan of genre fiction. The most recent, which came out this week, is called “ Magic and Mystery ,” and it gathers a bunch of fantasy authors together and has them tackle puzzle box mystery stories, most of which involve a murder of some sort.
Like past collections — which have explored everything from the vast expanse of space to straight-up horror — the stories here are incredibly varied, and explore the theme in different and often clever ways. Travis Baldree’s Miss Gentle and the Case of the Very Flat Monk , for instance, introduces a detective character that I absolutely need to see solve other mysteries: an old woman who wears a full suit of armor covered in enchanted human appendages, and who never shows her face. Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Lion’s Tusk , meanwhile, involves a gruesome murder at a royal wedding, and features a clever and incredibly bizarre murder weapon unlike anything I’ve ever seen or read before.
Some of the most impressive stories manage to cram a whole bunch of worldbuilding into a short you can finish in one sitting. Heather Fawcett’s A Labyrinth of Honeybees introduces a fantasy realm rich with a long history of gods and competing religions, while The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious by Scott Lynch convincingly presents an ancient order of magic users who have been friends for centuries, and meet up every 13 years to hang out and show off their skills.
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