Tom Perrotta

 The Internet may be disrupting much of the book industry, but for short-story writers it has been a good thing.

Story collections, an often underappreciated literary cousin of novels, are experiencing a resurgence, driven by a proliferation of digital options that offer not only new creative opportunities but exposure and revenue as well.

Already, 2013 has yielded an unusually rich crop of short-story collections, including George Saunders’s “Tenth of December,” which arrived in January with a media splash normally reserved for Hollywood movies and moved quickly onto the best-seller lists.

 Now that I’ve directed you to satisfying summer reads , it’s time to return to the books that inspired my love of backlist. The third book in the “Book Lust Rediscoveries” series is Frederick Dillen’s wry, funny, and touching novel Fool , which introduces us to one of the most complex main characters in contemporary fiction. “For Christ sake don’t become a fluffmeister” are the last words Barnaby Griswold’s father ever says to him. Yet a fluffmeister, a fool, is Barnaby’s default position in life, as much as

Buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you. The independent bookstore is not the last stronghold of literary culture you think it is Jupiterimages/Thinkstock. Amazon just did a boneheaded thing, and it deserves all the scorn you want to heap on it. Last week, the company offered people cash in exchange for going into retail stores and scanning items using the company’s Price Check smartphone app. If you scanned a product and then purchased it from Amazon rather than the shop you were standing in, Amazon would give you a 5