In Country is Mason's 1985 novel about eighteen-year-old Samantha Hughes's quest to understand her father's death in the Vietnam War and to understand herself.

Mason's 1989 collection of short stories, Love Life, introduces more characters caught in changing circumstances.

Shelby Foote's Shiloh (1952) is a fictional account of the Civil War battle told from a variety of perspectives.

The American Story: Short Stories from the Rea Award (1993), edited by Michael Rea, offers a selection of stories by such authors as Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Charles Baxter, and Grace Paley, among others, for the student wishing to further an understanding of the short story genre and of minimalist writing.

The War in Kentucky: From Shiloh to Perryville is James McDonough's 1994 exploration of the importance of Kentucky in the Civil War.

New Women and New Fiction: Short Stories since the Sixties (1986) is a collection of stories by such contemporary women writers as Cynthia Ozick, Toni Cade Bambara, Anne Tyler, Fay Weldon and Ann Beattie, among others.

Raymond Carver's Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories (1988) is widely considered a collection of minimalist masterpieces.