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The hazy days of a Baltimore summer don't do much for the attention span. When you want to get away from it all but can't concentrate for long, why not try a short story? These collections are sure to have something for every taste.

"What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going"

by Damion Searls Dalkey

Archive, $12.95

Damion Searls makes his fiction debut with this impressive collection of five stories. Searls is also a translator, and he puts his knowledge of world literature to good use: each story is a contemporary reaction to, or retelling of, a classic tale.

Though each is worth reading, the two strongest stories are the first two in the collection. In the buoyantly eccentric "56 Water Street," based on Andre Gide's "Marshlands," a young man named Giles navigates his circle of quirky friends and roommates while trying to write a novel in which nothing much happens. The second story, "The Cubicles," based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Custom-House" is slightly darker in tone. It concerns a group of technical writers in Silicon Valley, slowly eliminated by continual "reductions in force."

Throughout the collection, but particularly in "The Cubicles," Searls draws his characters sharply and humanely. His meticulous and beautiful descriptions come naturally; not a phrase or a moment in the collection seems forced. Searls, a great stylist as well as a talented storyteller, is a writer to watch.

"Don't Cry"

by Mary Gaitskill

Pantheon, $23.95

In the 1990s, Mary Gaitskill published two fine short story collections, "Bad Behavior" and "Because They Wanted To." Featuring spiky yet vulnerable protagonists, usually embroiled in outre situations, these stories had a plaintive, sullen power.

In her latest collection, "Don't Cry," Gaitskill treads largely familiar territory, with mixed results. Most of the stories display Gaitskill's usual wry observational power but wind up displaying more style than substance. Unlike her previous efforts, they don't really go anywhere. And when Gaitskill tries to extend her range, as in "The Arms and Legs of the Lake," which examines a troubled veteran's train trip from multiple perspectives, the results can be painfully inept.

In the end, the most successful story in the collection, "Description," is one of the most straightforward. It tells of two recent college graduates, both veterans of the same writing workshop, trying to parse the reality and fiction of their lives. "Don't Cry" is probably worth reading for die-hard Gaitskill fans. Newcomers to her stories would do better to start with "Because They Wanted To," the better of her earlier collections.

"The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009"

edited by Laura Furman

Anchor, $15

This latest installment of the O. Henry Prize anthology is a mixed bag, as such collections usually are. Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum's "The Nursery" is a refreshingly sympathetic look at a woman who goes too far to protect her teenage son. Literary stalwart Paul Theroux proves himself adept at the new genre of "flash fiction" in "Twenty-two Stories," made up of several very short narratives.

"Isabel's Daughter," by Karen Brown, is another stand-out. This tale of a roadie reuniting with the daughter of his stripper ex-girlfriend easily could have turned mawkish, but it is in fact remarkably poignant and tender. And Graham Joyce brings a touch of the demonic to his remarkable tale of post-traumatic stress disorder, "An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen."

Some of the other stories are so minimalist as to seem inconsequential -- or else use an exotic locale or situation as a crutch for flat writing or an uninteresting story. Nevertheless, there are enough gems in this volume to make it worth a look.

Rebecca Oppenheimer, a recent Towson University graduate and National Book Critics' Circle member, continues to dive into the latest books from her home in Stevenson.

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