December is such a busy month that, for many people, it’s hard to find time to read. May I suggest short stories? You can fit one in whenever there’s a gap in your schedule, and you won’t be lost if you can’t pick the book up again for a while. Here’s a roundup of some of the year’s best collections—they all make great gifts, too, either for yourself or your loved ones.

Your Utopia by Bora Chung (trans. by Anton Hur; Algonquin, Jan. 30): South Korean author Chung made a splash when Cursed Bunny, her first collection to be translated into English, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Don’t be fooled by the title of her new book: Your utopia is far from assured. Using science fiction elements, Chung explores the ills of our own world. Our starred review says that “the imagined worlds here may not be utopian—but the reading experience is.”

Weird Black Girls by Elwin Cotman (Scribner, April 16): Another fantastical collection, Cotman’s book is “splendidly strange,” according to our starred review. There may be a Black witch roaming the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in one story; in another, a man is transported back in time, finding himself inhabiting his lover’s body while he’s taking an acting class with the star of Dragonslayer. Our review calls the book “sharp, poignant, funny, and, above all, filled with the joy of invention—a must-read.”

Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver (Grove, Feb. 13): When Oliver died in 1966 at age 22, she had published only four stories; this book is the first time they’ve been collected, along with two posthumously published works and a few that have never been published before. The book “testifies both to her immense raw talent as a young writer and to the major figure she might have become,” according to our starred review. “Her stories deal with the everyday lives of Black families of all classes as they contend with issues such as segregation, poverty, and prejudice and their own hopes for the future.”

The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck (Viking, July 9): In his first work of fiction, Shattuck has created an ingenious structure: Each of the stories is linked to another, forming a thematically unified pair that deepens our understanding of both. Set in New England, the stories range from the 18^th century to the present and concern art, music, history, nature, friendship, and love. “Intricately structured, powerfully emotional, beautifully written: This is as good as short fiction gets,” according to our starred review.

Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte (Morrow/HarperCollins, Sept. 17): The stories in this linked collection all deal with rejection, mostly of the sexual and romantic kind. “Tulathimutte is unafraid to write the most disturbing, disgusting, and delightfully deranged things,” says our starred review. “Each time you think the characters have hit rock bottom, they pull out a shovel and start digging more.…Their need for approval, acceptance, relevancy, and even chaos is so intense that it can feel nauseating at times.”

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.