Mahreen Sohail Books In Order

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Mahreen Sohail is a published author that you may or may not have heard of, but you definitely cannot afford to miss out on!

She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, the same place that she studied as a Fulbright scholar. Mahreen has had her work featured in places such as Guernica, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, Granta, A Public Space, and other places.

Before this, she was a Charles Pick Fellow at the UK’s University of East Anglia in Norwich. The author has also received fellowships from Yaddo and Hedgebrook. She also penned a short story collection called Small Scale Sinners, which came out in 2025 from A Public Space.

Small Scale Sinners is a 2025 collection of short stories. This book has received acclaim and praise and was the winner of the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. This debut takes an up close look at the lives that women lead in Pakistan and looks into the burdens, the freedom, the love, and more that they experience through twelve powerful stories. Those who really enjoy short story collections will not want to miss out!

Through these different electric stories, the author dives into the details of women’s lives and who they are, as siblings, daughters, mothers, in marriage, and on their own. She likes to write about women who are complex, and who are often able to speak the language of grief but do not find themselves defined or confined by it. They lead lives that are full of betrayal and desire, and live in a world where everything seems ordinary but where there can be menace lurking quietly underneath.

Neighbors do not lend each other sugar so much as spy on each other. Estranged families also come together once more at a funeral, and some regular schoolgirls end up finding themselves caught up in a murder. This is an incredible work that will have readers not wanting to stop at just one story and moving quickly on to the next.

These days so many works are all fluff, but Mahreen Sohail has brought a collection of stories with not only grit and depth but heart and soul in them. Editor and author Garth Risk Hallberg says that Mahreen’s ‘flawless eye for detail meets a daring instinct to tack and swerve and startle in stories that are wonderful’.

The debut offers up so much for others to enjoy and experienced readers will be able to appreciate these stories just as much as occasional readers who are looking for something new but rich to shake up their usual routine. Author Kevin Wilson (author of the book Now is Not the Time to Panic) has called this book ‘Pure brilliance’ and says that the author is ‘funny and dark and absolutely in control’, calling her story collection ‘a masterful debut’.

It’s completely rare to come across an author like this, and readers no doubt have every reason to look forward to more great work from Mahreen Sohail in the future. Join fans of this book like author Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (who called the work ‘Audacious and precise’) by getting a copy for yourself and reading each of these dozen stories, each one crafted painstakingly like a delicate Faberge egg. See what all the fuss is about by purchasing Small Scale Sinners today!