In 1925, the young Ernest Hemingway published his second collection of short stories. While the individual stories were praised, critics seemed baffled by the collection's unique construction—each story is prefaced by a brief, unexplained vignette, while events and characters from one story appear and are referenced again in the next. D.H. Lawrence, reviewing the collection, wrote that, "In Our Time calls itself a book of stories, but it isn't that. It is a series of successive sketches from a man's life, and makes a fragmentary novel."

Lawrence, in his review, was attempting to define the nebulous nature of what would later be referred to as the short story cycle, the composite novel or, sometimes, a novel in stories. However, it wasn't until 1971 that Lawrence's "fragmentary novel" was redubbed the short story cycle by Forrest L. Ingram and defined by him as "a set of stories so linked to one another that the reader's experience of each one is modified by the experience of the others."

Then, in 1995, Anne R. Morris and Maggie Dunn expanded on Ingram's definition, explaining that there are five ways in which stories could be linked to one another:

1. Stories share a setting.
2. Stories share a narrator/protagonist.
3. Stories feature at least one character from a shared group of protagonists.
4. Stories share a common theme.
5. Stories share a narrative style.

Hemingway was far from the first individual to create a composite novel. Susan Garland Mann, in The Short Story Cycle: A Genre Companion and Reference Guide, argues that Hemingway was influenced by James Joyce's Dubliners, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and Gertrude Stein's Three Lives, all of which are collections in which stories are linked by a common setting.

In turn, these great collections of the early twentieth century are influencing the writers of today. Short story cycles are regularly being published, some to great critical acclaim; two short story cycles, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, have won the Pulitzer Prize within the last decade. One could even argue that the prestige cable dramas of the twenty-first century, many of which are all built from linked individual episodes, owe some debt to the short story cycle—an HBO miniseries adaptation of Olive Kitteridge won eight Primetime Emmy awards in 2014.

So, in honor of Short Story Month, we have some recommended short story cycles you might want to pick up in your local library.

The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro (1978)
Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro traces the relationship of Rose and her step-mother, Flo, in Twentieth Century Ontario, Canada.

A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories by Will Eisner (1978)
Considered the first "graphic novel," Will Eisner's opus is actually a series of linked stories about Jewish-American life in the tenements of the fictional Droopsie Avenue in the Bronx.

The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor (1982)
Like Eisner's Droopsie Avenue, Naylor's fictional Brewster Place acts as the backdrop and one of the connecting threads in these stories about African American women at the end of The Great Migration.

The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald (1992)
In each of these four stories, an unnamed German narrator tells of his encounters with German Jews in the decades following the Holocaust.

Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones (1992)
Following in the footsteps of James Joyce in Dubliners, Jones presents a series of stories about the lives of characters in a single city: Washington D.C. Like Joyce, Jones begins the collection with the youngest character and ends the collection with the oldest character.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie (1993)
These stories chart the coming-of-age of Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-The-Fire on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington, as well as the histories of their families and neighbors.

Drown by Junot Diaz (1996)
Diaz's first collection introduces readers to Yunior, who also narrates A Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao and This is How You Lose Her. The stories in this collection follow Yunior as he emigrates from the Domincan Republic to New York and, later, New Jersey, and struggles with his brother's battle with cancer.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (2008)
The titular Olive appears in the foreground and background of these stories about the residents of Crosby, Maine, as the town and its residents age into the early twenty-first century.

Normal People Don't Live Like This by Dylan Landis (2009)
Landis' stories trace the coming age of a young woman, seen from the varied perspectives of her family and friends; beginning on the Upper West Side in the 1970s and extending through her adolescence and adulthood.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (2009)
These short stories follow a set characters, all connected to the fate of an aging landowner, through the cities and villages of Pakistan. (Also listed on Fiction Set in Pakistan by Gwen Glazer)

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)
Egan uses a series of stories to follow a group of teen bandmates after they part ways and forge their own paths to success.

Redeployment by Phil Klay (2014)
Each of these stories presents a moment in the life of a member of the U.S. military, deployed in the Iraq or Afghan wars.

In the Country by Mia Alvar (2015)
This collection presents stories about the lives of Filipino citizens, portraying the different lives of those who left for the United States or Saudi Arabia, and those who stayed in their own country.

If the short story cycle you love isn't listed here, let us know in the comments below!