Dance of the Happy Shades
Munro's debut collection offers a chronological starting point and introduces her characteristic short-fiction form.
Author guide
Alice Munro Books in Order
Alice Ann Munro (1931–2024) was a Canadian writer best known for short fiction rooted in the lives, relationships, memories, and social histories of ordinary people, especially in rural and small-town Ontario. She published fourteen original book-length works, including one novel, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 for her mastery of the contemporary short story.
short fictionliterary fictionmemoir
Catalog record updated .
Not sure where to begin?
Start with one of these
Lives of Girls and Women
Her only novel is an accessible entry point for readers who prefer a sustained narrative.
Outside the series
Bibliography by category
Novels (1)
- Lives of Girls and Women
novel · 1971
The book is a collection of several short stories, describing the struggles of growing up, which Del, the protagonist is confronted with. The book is a description of the initiation she is undergoing through out the process of turning…
Short fiction (13)
- Dance of the Happy Shades
short-story-collection · 1968
Fifteen stories about life in rural Ontario deal with adolescence, loneliness, broken hearts, an abandoned wife, family relations, blind dates, and an aspiring writer.
- Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You
short-story-collection · 1974
"Alice Munro is one of the great story writers... this collection of stories empathically, wondrously proves it.” —David Adams Richards In the thirteen rich stories that make up Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You, Alice Munro…
- Who Do You Think You Are?
linked-story-collection · 1978
Interweaving stories tell of the evolving bond between practical, narrow-minded Flo and her stepdaughter Rose, who manages to escape her small town life to achieve an equivocal success in the larger world.
- The Moons of Jupiter
short-story-collection · 1982
The characters who populate an Alice Munro story live and breathe. Passions hopelessly conceived, affections betrayed, marriages made and broken: the joys, fears, loves, and awakenings of women echo throughout these twleve unforgettable…
- The Progress of Love
short-story-collection · 1986
A divorced woman returns to her childhood home where she confronts the memory of her parents' confounding yet deep bond. The accidental near-drowning of a child exposes the fragility of the trust between children and parents. A young man,…
- Friend of My Youth
short-story-collection · 1990
Presents a collection of ten stories that convey the unspoken mysteries at the heart of all human experience; from a woman haunted by her dreams of her dead mother to an adulterous couple stepping over the line where the initial…
- Open Secrets
short-story-collection · 1994
On strong government institutions for the solidarity and strength of people in future Afghan government.
- The Love of a Good Woman
short-story-collection · 1998
All of these eight wonderful stories are about what people will do for love, and the unexpected routes their passion will force them to take. An old landlady in Vancouver who alarms the just-married narrator with her prim advice about…
- Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
short-story-collection · 2001
Alice Munro has long been heralded for her penetrating, lyrical prose, and in "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" -- the basis for Sarah Polley's film Away From Her -- her prodigious talents are once again on display. As she follows Grant,…
- Runaway
short-story-collection · 2004
Presents three stories connected into one narrative about Juliet - who escapes from teaching at a girls' school and throws herself into a wild and passionate love match. This work is about the power and betrayals of love, about lost…
- The View from Castle Rock
short-story-collection · 2006
"In stories that are more personal than any she's written before, Alice Munro pieces her family's history into gloriously imagined fiction. Other stories take place in more familiar Munro territory, the town and countryside around Lake…
- Too Much Happiness
short-story-collection · 2009
Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writers--the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. In the first story a young wife and mother receives release from the unbearable pain of losing her three…
- Dear Life
short-story-collection · 2012
With her peerless ability to give us the essence of a life in often brief but spacious and timeless stories, Alice Munro illumines the moment a life is shaped -- the moment a dream, or sex, or perhaps a simple twist of fate turns a person…
