The first and bestselling volume of its kind showcases the country's finest short fiction. This year's stories come handpicked by a beloved master of the form and are sure to feature more unforgettable characters and extraordinary writing.
Collects forty short stories published between 1915 and 2015, from writers that include Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, and Alice Munro that exemplify their era and stand the test of time --
Best-selling author Walter Mosley has selected the year's top fiction from voices well-known and new. Here several authors bring their stories to vivid life for a banner audio edition.
This year’s Best American Short Stories is edited by the critically acclaimed and best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver, whose latest book is Prodigal Summer. Kingsolver’s selections for The Best American Short Stories 2001 showcase a wide variety of new voices and masters, such as Alice Munro, Rick Moody, Dorothy West, and John Updike. “Reading these stories was both a distraction from and an anchor to the complexities of my life — my pleasure, my companionship, my salvation. I hope they will be yours.” — Barbara Kingsolver
A compilation of twenty-one American short stories originally published in magazines and periodicals issued between January 1999 and January 2000, selected for inclusion by guest editor E.L. Doctorow, with contributors' notes, and a list of one hundred additional distinguished stories of 1999.
“In twenty-nine separate but ingenious ways, these stories seek permanent residence within a reader. They strive to become an emotional or intellectual cargo that might accompany us wherever, or however, we go. . . . If we are made by what we read, if language truly builds people into what they are, how they think, the depth with which they feel, then these stories are, to me, premium material for that construction project. You could build a civilization with them.” —Ben Marcus, from the Introduction Award-winning author of Notable American Women Ben Marcus brings us this engaging and comprehensive collection of short stories that explore the stylistic variety of the medium in America today. Sea Oak by George Saunders Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower Do Not Disturb by A.M. Homes The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender The Caretaker by Anthony Doerr The Old Dictionary by Lydia Davis The Father’s Blessing by Mary Caponegro The Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders by Aleksandar Hemon People Shouldn’t Have to be the Ones to Tell You by Gary Lutz Histories of the Undead by Kate Braverman When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine by Jhumpa Lahiri Down the Road by Stephen Dixon X Number of Possibilities by Joanna Scott Tiny, Smiling Daddy by Mary Gaitskill Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace The Sound Gun by Matthew Derby Short Talks by Anne Carson Field Events by Rick Bass Scarliotti and the Sinkhole by Padgett Powell
Award-winning and best-selling author Junot Díaz guest edits this year's The Best American Short Stories, the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction.
Great American Short Stories: From Hawthorne to Hemingway is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Uniquely capable of capturing a moment in time, the short story occupies a cherished place in the history of American literature. During the last 200 years, some of this nation’s greatest writers have produced outstanding examples of this art form, many of which are included in this collection. Beginning with well-known stories by Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe, this diverse and colorful collection includes tales by Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Sherwood Anderson, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Stephen Crane, and Mary Wilkins Freeman. From Sarah Orne Jewett’s portraits of rural Maine to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s brilliant tales from the Jazz Age, these stories span the breadth of the American experience. In addition to acknowledged masters of the short story form, such as O. Henry, Jack London, and Ernest Hemingway, this volume features stories by Charles W. Chesnutt, the first important African-American novelist, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a leading theorist of the early women’s movement. Corinne Demas is Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College and a fiction editor of the Massachusetts Review. She has a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. She is the author of two collections of short stories, two novels, a memoir, and numerous books for children.