Dear Match Book,

Recently, I’ve been reading story collections. My current favorites are “Tenth of December,” by George Saunders; “This Is How You Lose Her,” by Junot Díaz; and “The Emigrants,” by W.G. Sebald. I just finished “Dangerous Laughter,” by Steven Millhauser, and was knocked off my comfy reading chair. How had I missed this amazing author? I want to read everything he’s ever written. So here’s my question: Who else have I missed? Can you think of a few authors who have not published in a while, who may be favorites of literature professors but not best sellers? Are there more Steven Millhausers out there?

MIMI DROP

LOS ANGELES

Dear Mimi,

When the short fiction virtuoso Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013, short story aficionados — and Munro devotees — rejoiced. (Don’t miss the layered mysteries of human behavior in Munro’s “Open Secrets” and “Friend of My Youth.”) Fans of writers such as Lorrie Moore (please read “Birds of America” to suffer from fits of laughter), Raymond Carver (follow the tragedy of ordinary people in “Where I’m Calling From”), Andre Dubus (look to “Dancing After Hours” for characters who wrestle with belief and love) and Grace Paley (listen to the voices that animate domestic life in her “Collected Stories”), among others, evangelize about the form because although story collections win big-name prizes some years, they seldom hit the best-seller lists.

Summer is a good time to catch up on short fiction. Not because stories are breezy, since most aren’t. Instead, the compression of the form means that readers may need the extra time summer affords to contemplate the sorrows, joy and menace contained in miniature.

All Over the Map

The virtuosic variety of Millhauser’s work makes me think you’d like Nam Le’s debut collection from 2008, “The Boat.” Le’s brash scope — characters include a 14-year-old hit man in Cartagena and a little girl in Hiroshima — is dazzling. Some readers wait impatiently for the next book in their favorite series; I scan the tables of contents of literary magazines looking for Nam Le’s next story.