How short can a story be and still truly be a story? This volume of seventy-two very short fictions, none much more than 750 words in length, demonstrates to our repeated satisfaction that less can be more, small can stand tall, and the diminutive can be dynamically and dramatically complete. Here for enjoyment and study are very short pieces by acknowledged modern masters--including Raymond Carver, Richard Brautigan, Margaret Atwood, Julio Cortazar and Tim O'Brien--as well as fiction by newer talents, who have embraced the short form with much gusto and considerable grace. With a rich variety of stories and authors, subjects and styles and sensibilities, these flashes of fiction make for eclectic--and often electric-- reading. The volume is a must for readers and writers, indeed for anyone interested in the finely sharpened edge of contemporary literature.