Collected Stories (1950) by William Faulkner is an exhaustive collection of his short fiction. The volume includes "Barn Burning" and many other stories about Yoknapatawpha County. The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner is the novel that established his reputation as an important writer. This experimental novel concerns the decline of the once proud Compson family of Yoknapatawpha County. The story is told in four sections, each one detailing the disintegration of the Compsons from a different character's viewpoint. Faulkner used this technique in other novels as well, including As I Lay Dying (1930) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936).

Many of the works of Flannery O'Connor are in the same Southern Gothic tradition as "A Rose for Emily." Her short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955) details a vacationing family's doomed encounter with an escaped criminal known as the Misfit.

Southern...