This collection of novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston’s short stories – among them eight “lost” Harlem Renaissance tales from the 1920s and 30s (recovered from the archives of forgotten periodicals) – highlights her favourite subject: feisty women who deploy whatever strategies are available to escape their bullish men.

Caroline exemplifies this breed in The Country in the Woman. The Florida migrant is spotted in Harlem with an axe over her shoulder seeking her husband, Mitchell, whose mistress is wearing a fur coat he bought. We’re left to imagine the eventual altercation as Hurston teases, describing only its fallout: Caroline’s wiry frame “wrapped in the loose folds of a natural muskrat coat”, while from the head of the axe “hung the trousers of Mitchell’s natty suit”.

In Sweat, another feckless husband tries to force out his wife, hiding a snake in her wash basket. He gets his comeuppance, though, when he returns home, drunk, and is bitten by the reptile.

All of these 21 stories are enlivened by the author’s wickedly funny, sprightly dialogue. Sixty years after Hurston’s death – and more than 80 since her masterpiece, 1937’s Their Eyes Were Watching God – the editor of Hitting a Straight Lick… has wisely chosen not to tamper with grammatical idiosyncrasies or the Florida vernacular of Houston’s home town, Eatonville, giving an edge to the tales that whistle and sing.

The darkest stories confront the complexities of love and race. When, in Muttsy, southern woman Pinkie arrives at a disreputable boarding house in Harlem, she finds herself the centre of the men’s attention. Though there are no white characters, Hurston subtly illuminates the self-loathing and deference to whites that pervades black communities. Muttsy, a gambler, wrestles Pinkie away from prospective suitors, saying: “Ahm gointer git mah’ried tuh de doll baby [and] treat her white.”

In Under the Bridge, a widower struggles to contain his jealousy after witnessing his new younger wife and adult son’s growing affection for each other. His old skin prickles with the feeling of “their love like a presence occupying the house”.

It’s easy to read the biography of Hurston in her protagonists’ lives. Like them, she suffered her share of misfortune (she was buried in an unmarked grave, discovered and marked by admirer Alice Walker in 1973, instigating renewed interest in her work), but never shirked a fight or walked away from danger. On literary and ethnographic expeditions, Hurston packed a pistol along with her notepads. These stories share that same wild spirit – unnerving at times, they are always a thrill.

• Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick by Zora Neale Hurston is published by HQ (£12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15