By Jeff Baker (in Wichita, Kansas)

For Day # 19 of Short-Story Month, the theme is stories by an author from a country other than your own. I’ll recommend just about anything by two masters of the form.

First; “The Flung-Back Lid” by Peter Godfrey. Set in Godfrey’s native South Africa the mystery has Oom (“Uncle”) Rolf Le Roux solving the murder of a man stabbed to death while traveling alone in a cable car down from the top of a mountain. It is collected in “The Newtonian Egg” by Crippen and Landru, the title story being another fine impossible crime story. All the stories are full of vivid images of Godfrey’s home country. Godfrey stood up against the Apartheid regime and fled South Africa for England.https://www.amazon.com/Newtonian-Other-Crippen-Landru-Classics/dp/1885941692/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Newtonian+Egg&qid=1558343407&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr

Second; Jorge Luis Borges from Argentina. Instantly associated with magical realism, Borges’ output of short stories is indescribable (“The Garden of Forking Paths,” “The Library of Babel.”) and the story I’m putting here is his homage to a writer from a country other than his; H. P. Lovecraft! In “There Are More Things,” Borges finds a twist that hadn’t been done by the jillions of Lovecraft imitators! I’ll recommend any of Borges’ stories again, and mention that I treasure my copy of the complete Borges stories.