"[In the author's first collection of short fiction, she] pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life. Indeed, she writes what we're all thinking-- if only we could express it with the wit of a master satirist, the storytelling gifts of an old-fashioned raconteur, and the vision of an American original"--Amazon.com. Sittenfeld has established a reputation for humanizing her...

"A debut story collection offering a kaleidoscopic portrait of life for contemporary Chinese people, set between China and the United States"--

"In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine" follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. "Nirvana," portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the...

Over the past several decades, Edith Pearlman has staked her claim as one of the all-time great practitioners of the short story. Her incomparable vision, consummate skill, and bighearted spirit have earned her consistent comparisons to Anton Chekhov, John Updike, Alice Munro, Grace Paley, and Frank O'Connor. Her latest work, gathered in this stunning collection of twenty new stories, is an occasion for celebration.
Pearlman writes with warmth...

"From the Pulitzer finalist and universally beloved author of the New York Times best sellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a stunning new collection of short fiction that showcases her extraordinary gifts of language and imagination"--

A masterful anthology featuring nineteen pieces of short fiction, Growing Things is an exciting glimpse into Paul Tremblay's fantastically fertile imagination. In "The Teacher," a Bram Stoker Award nominee for best short story, a student is forced to watch a disturbing video that will haunt and torment her and her classmates' lives. Four men rob a pawn shop at gunpoint only to vanish, one-by-one, as they speed away from the crime scene in "The Getaway."...

Presents twenty of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.

A thrilling collection of twenty-one original stories by an all-star list of contributors--including a new A Game of Thrones story by George R. R. Martin! The latest story collection from #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois is filled with subtle shades of gray. Twenty-one all-original stories, by an all-star list of contributors, will delight and astonish you in equal measure with their...

For the past year, a group of high school students met at a publishing house in San Francisco every Monday night to read literary magazines, chapbooks, graphic novels, and countless articles. This committee was assisted by a group of students that met in the basement of a robot shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Together, and under the guidance of guest editor Adam Johnson, these high schoolers selected the contents of The Best American Nonrequired Reading...

"'To read their stories felt to me the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time,' recalls Curtis Sittenfeld of her initial encounter with the Best American Short Stories series. 'They were windows into emotions I had and hadn't had, into other settings and circumstances and observations and relationships.' Sittenfeld was met by the same feeling selecting the stories for this year's edition. The result is a striking and nuanced...