O. Henry, here’s Lydia Davis short story about sausages. And Salami.

My son’s Italian landlord in Brooklyn kept a shed out back in which he cured and smoked salamis. One night, in the midst of a wave of petty vandalism and theft, the shed was broken into and the salamis were taken. My son talked to his landlord about it the next day, commiserating over the vanished sausages. The landlord was resigned and philosophical, but corrected him: ‘They were not sausages. They were salamis.’ Then the incident was written up in one of the city’s more prominent magazines as an amusing and colourful urban incident. In the article, the reporter called the stolen goods ‘sausages’. My son showed the article to his landlord, who hadn’t seen it. The landlord was interested and pleased that the magazine had seen fit to report the incident, but he added: ‘They weren’t sausages. They were salamis.’

You can read more wonderful Lydia Davis short at Five Dials online magazine. This week it was announced that Davis’s The Seals is one of 18 short stories, including ones by Lionel Shriver and Molly Antopol, to be included famous O. Henry Prize Stories book to be released later in the year. The full list of winning short stories are:

• Percival Everett — “Finding Billy White Feather,” Virginia Quarterly Review
• Lydia Davis — “The Seals,” The Paris Review
• Lionel Shriver — “Kilifi Creek,” The New Yorker
• Manuel Muñoz — “Happiest Girl in the Whole USA,” Glimmer Train
• Russell Banks — “A Permanent Member of the Family,” Conjunctions
• Dina Nayeri — “A Ride Out of Phrao,” Alaska Quarterly Review 
• Emily Ruskovich — “Owl,” One Story
• Becky Hagenston — “The Upside-Down World,” Subtropics
• Lynn Freed — “The Way Things Are Going,” Harper’s
• Brenda Peynado — “The History of Happiness,” Cimarron Review
• Naira Kuzmich — “The Kingsley Drive Chorus,” Salamander
• Emma Torzs— “Word of Mouth,” The Three Penny Review
• Christopher Merkner — “Cabins,” Subtropics
• Molly Antopol — “My Grandmother Tells Me This Story,” Ecotone
• Lynne Sharon Schwartz — “The Golden Rule,” Fifth Wednesday Journal
• Joan Silber — “About My Aunt,” Tin House
• Thomas Pierce — “Ba Baboon,” The New Yorker
• Elizabeth Strout — “Snow Blind,” Virginia Quarterly Review
• Vauhini Vara — “I, Buffalo,” Tin House
• Elizabeth McCracken — “From the Radio,” Zoetrope: All-Story