At £1.99 the Kindle version of this book is excellent value for money. It features stories spanning nearly 200 years, from Washington Irving to Lydia Davis, that is from 1807 to 2006.

Along the way we encounter the better-known writers, such as Dorothy Parker, Washington Irving, William Faulkner, John Cheever and Jhumpa Lahiri, but perhaps the real joy lies in discovering lesser known ones such as Sherwood Anderson, Zora Neale Hurston and Charles W. Chesnutt. As such, this is an eclectic collection, to say the least.

But is this a useful book for nonfiction writers? The answer is that it never hurts to see how a fiction writer, in a relatively limited space, can convey an atmosphere with just the right word or phrase.

It is also worth bearing in mind that some of the best nonfiction writers, notably Gay Talese, make copious use of the fiction writer's tools. Even in newspaper articles, stories can be structured and written in a way that creates just as much suspense as a piece of fiction, as discussed in Storycraft.

This article first appeared in Write! Please see below for details.