Improve recovery time of discrete bjt monostable multivibrator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivibrator#Monostable_multivibrator_circuit

If you use the circuit shown there, it tells you that the recovery time is given by:
t = ln(2)R2C1. To decrease pulse time simply reduce R2 or C1 and it will shorten how long you're in the temporarily stable state. To reduce what you refer to as recovery time, you should be able to reduce R1. The issue you speak of in the comments would occur due to a non-zero rise time on the left side of C1. If you have high voltage BJT's, you could potentially reduce this rise time to virtually 0 by replacing R1 with a PNP (in your case an NPN) then have a resistor tied between the base of that transistor and the node between R3 and R4. this would create a BJT inverter to drive the left side of the capacitor rapidly between 0V and +V.

Obviously, if you want to use PNP's you'll have to mirror/flip the circuit vertically and replace the NPN's with PNP's.