Five top short stories

Danny Heitman, a columnist for The Baton Rouge Advocate, is the author of A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House. One of his five favorite short stories, as shared at the Christian Science Monitor:

Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.”

A Yukon traveler foolishly decides to travel through the frozen waste alone, then finds himself in a race against time as he tries to build a fire before hypothermia sets in. I first read this story as a child on a sweltering Louisiana day; even so, it chilled me to the bone.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see: Tessa Hadley's top ten short stories, Rosamund Bartlett's five top books on Russian short stories, Chris Priestley's top ten scary short stories, Jane Ciabattari's five must-read short-story collections, and Alison MacLeod's top ten short stories.

--Marshal Zeringue