Reddit mentions of The Complete Stories (FSG Classics)

Flannery O'Connor was going to be my answer. She's breathtakingly and brutally honest.

I would just recommend getting her complete collection.

If you ever do have a hankering for some good Southern fiction with strong typological themes, I do recommend picking up some of her work. My wife acquired this volume recently, and I'm stealing some reads/re-reads from it. (For whatever reason her *ahem* PUBLIC school didn't read O'Connor like I did while *ahem* HOMESCHOOLING.)

Nobody since, as far as I'm concerned, has really mastered the grotesque in quite the same way. Her Complete Stories is spectacular, there's really nothing in there that isn't worth your time.

[Jorge Luis Borges] (http://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9780811200127-16)

[Flannery O'Connor] (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Stories-Flannery-OConnor/dp/0374515360/)

Three of my favorite Catholic books:

Flannery O'Connor - The Complete Stories

Walker Percy - The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do With the Other

Joseph Ratzinger - Introduction to Christianity

edit--A fourth,

Thomas Merton - Seven Storey Mountain

I highly highly highly recommend picking up a Flannery O'Connor anthology.

This version is what I have.

Flip around and start with "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Good Country People."