The Best American Short Stories 2020

“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.” Decades later, Sittenfeld was met by the same feeling selecting the stories for this year’s edition. The result is a striking and nuanced collection, bringing to life awkward college students, disgraced public figures, raunchy grandparents, and mystical godmothers. To read these stories is to experience the transporting joys of discovery and affirmation, and to realize that story writing in America continues to flourish. THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2020 INCLUDES T. C. BOYLE • EMMA CLINE • MARY GAITSKILL ANDREA LEE • ELIZABETH McCRACKEN • ALEJANDRO PUYANA WILLIAM PEI SHIH • KEVIN WILSON and others

With a new 1999 story added to the paperback volume, this collection of the best stories of the century includes some of the greatest names in literature as well as a few spectacular one-hit wonders. Reprint.

Best-selling, award-winning, pop culture powerhouse Roxane Gay guest edits this year’s Best American Short Stories, the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction. “I am looking for the artful way any given story is conveyed,” writes Roxane Gay in her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2018, “but I also love when a story has a powerful message, when a story teaches me something about the world.” The artful, profound, and sometimes funny stories Gay chose for the collection transport readers from a fraught family reunion to an immigration detention center, from a psychiatric hospital to a coed class sleepover in a natural history museum. We meet a rebellious summer camper, a Twitter addict, and an Appalachian preacher—all characters and circumstances that show us what we “need to know about the lives of others.”

A collection of the year’s best mystery short fiction selected by New York Times best-selling and Edgar Award–winning author C. J. Box. C. J. Box , #1 New York Times best-selling author of the hugely popular Joe Pickett series, selects the best short mystery and crime fiction of the year in this annual “treat for crime-fiction fans” (Library Journal).

#1 New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony Doerr brings his“stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. #1 New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Anthony Doerr brings his“stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. Doerr and the series editor, Heidi Pitlor, winnow down twenty stories out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

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

For the 100th anniversary of "The Best American Short Stories" series, a retrospective of stories selected by master of the form Lorrie Moore. The stories, along with one hundred years of behind-the-scenes anecdotes and decade-by-decade analysis, tell the history of American short fiction, showcasing representative moments in the series as well as literary moments in time.

The essential annual guide to the newest voices in short fiction, selected this year by Tracy O’Neill, Nafissa Thompson–Spires, and Deb Olin Unferth Who are the most promising short story writers working today? Where do we look to discover the future stars of literary fiction? This book will offer a dozen compelling answers to these questions. The stories collected here represent the most recent winners of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, which recognizes twelve writers who have made outstanding debuts in literary magazines in the previous year. They are chosen by a panel of distinguished judges, themselves innovators of the short story form: Tracy O’Neill, Nafissa Thompson–Spires, and Deb Olin Unferth. Each piece comes with an introduction by its original editors, whose commentaries provide valuable insight into what magazines are looking for in their submissions, and showcase the vital work they do to nurture literature’s newest voices.

The best science fiction and fantasy stories from 2019, guest-edited by author of the mega-best-selling Outlander series, Diana Gabaldon. Today’s readers of science fiction and fantasy have an appetite for stories that address a wide variety of voices, perspectives, and styles. There is an openness to experiment and pushing boundaries, combined with the classic desire to read about spaceships and dragons, future technology and ancient magic, and the places where they intersect. Contemporary science fiction and fantasy looks to accomplish the same goal as ever—to illuminate what it means to be human. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and Diana Gabaldon, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today.

“The literary ‘Oscars’ features twenty outstanding examples of the best of the best in American short stories.” —Shelf Awareness for Readers The Best American Short Stories 2016 will be selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz. He brings "one of the most distinctive and magnetic voices in contemporary fiction: limber, streetwise, caffeinated and wonderfully eclectic" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times) to the collection.

The acclaimed author presents an anthology of “confrontational and at times confounding . . . stories to get lost in” by Colum McCann, Victor Lodato and others (Kirkus Reviews). In his introduction to this one hundredth volume of the beloved Best American Short Stories, guest editor T. C. Boyle writes, “The Model T gave way to the Model A and to the Ferrari and the Prius . . . modernism to postmodernism and post-postmodernism. We advance. We progress. We move on. But we are part of a tradition.” Boyle’s choices of stories reflect a vibrant range of characters, from a numb wife who feels alive only in the presence of violence to a new widower coming to terms with his sudden freedom, from a missing child to a champion speedboat racer. These stories will grab hold and surprise, which according to Boyle is “what the best fiction offers, and there was no shortage of such in this year’s selections.” The Best American Short Stories 2011 includes entries by Denis Johnson, Louise Erdrich, Elizabeth McCracken, Aria Beth Sloss, Thomas McGuane, and others.

Hannah was tall and graceful, naturally pretty, spirited and impulsive, the upper-class young woman who picked, of all men, Lovell---the introverted climate scientist who thought he could change the world if he could just get everyone to listen to reason. After a magical honeymoon, they settled in the suburbs to raise their two children. But over the years, Lovell and Hannah’s conversations have become charged with resentments and unspoken desires. She has become withdrawn. His work affords him a convenient distraction. And then, after one explosive argument, Hannah vanishes. For the first time, Lovell is forced to examine the trajectory of his marriage through the lens of memory. As he tries to piece together what happened to his wife--and to their life together--readers follow Hannah on that single day when a hasty decision proves irrevocable. With haunting intensity, a seamless balance of wit and heartbreak, and the emotional acuity that author Heidi Pitlor brings to every page, The Daylight Marriage mines the dark and delicate nature of a marriage. “A page-turning exploration of unexpressed love and unnecessary loss. Riveting and heartbreaking.” —GERALDINE BROOKS, author of Caleb’s Crossing “In The Daylight Marriage, there are two mysteries--the whereabouts of a missing woman and the vagaries of the human heart. Heidi Pitlor explores both of these enigmas with equal mastery, merging a shocking crime story with an incisive portrait of a failed marriage. The result is a novel that is fast-moving, emotionally complex, and ultimately heartbreaking.” —Tom Perrotta, author of Nine Inches “Pitlor brings forth the emotions that surge beneath the surface with the precision and power of a conductor . . . This powerful analysis of how dreams become nightmares will make readers want to hold their loved ones close.” —Booklist, starred review

"In this powerful short fiction, Mary Gaitskill--whose searing honesty about gender relations has been legendary since the appearance of Bad Behavior in the 1980s--considers our moment through the lens of a particular #metoo incident. The effervescent and well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has long been one of Margot's best friends. When several women in his field accuse him of inappropriate touching and remarks, Gaitskill builds the account of his undoing through Quin and Margot's alternating voices, allowing readers to experience Quin as a whole person--one whose behavior toward women could be hurtful and presumptuous on the one hand, and keenly supportive on the other. Margot, an older woman who alternately despairs of and sympathizes with the positions of the younger women involved in Quin's case, is the thrumming engine of this remarkable piece of truthtelling. As Gaitskill has said, fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject, which she sees as subtly colored in shades of gray, rather than the black and white of our current conversations. Her compliment to her characters--and to her readers--is that they are unvarnished and real; her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don't always admire them, is a beacon of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers"--

The New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings compiles a stunning anthology of literary short fiction with T.C. Boyle, Emma Cline and others. “If you know exactly what you are going to get from the experience of reading a story, you probably wouldn’t go looking for it; you need, in order to be an open reader of fiction, to be willing. To cast a vote for what you love and then wait for the outcome,” writes Meg Wolitzer in her introduction to this volume. The Best American Short Stories 2017 casts a vote for and celebrates all that is our country. Here you’ll find a man with a boyfriend and a girlfriend, naval officers trapped on a submarine, a contestant on America’s Funniest Home Videos, and a gay man desperate to be a father—unforgettable characters waiting for an outcome, burning with stories to tell. The Best American Short Stories 2017 includes entries by T.C. Boyle, Jai Chakrabarti, Emma Cline, Danielle Evans, Lauren Groff, Eric Puchner, Jim Shepard, Curtis Sittenfeld, Jenn Walter and others.

“As our vision becomes more global, our storytelling is stretching in many ways. Stories increasingly change point of view, switch location, and sometimes pack as much material as a short novel might,” writes guest editor Elizabeth Strout. “It’s the variety of voices that most indicates the increasing confluence of cultures involved in making us who we are.” The Best American Short Stories 2013 presents an impressive diversity of writers who dexterously lead us into their corners of the world. In “Miss Lora,” Junot Díaz masterfully puts us in the mind of a teenage boy who throws aside his better sense and pursues an intimate affair with a high school teacher. Sheila Kohler tackles innocence and abuse as a child wanders away from her mother, in thrall to a stranger she believes is the “Magic Man.” Kirstin Valdez Quade’s “Nemecia” depicts the after-effects of a secret, violent family trauma. Joan Wickersham’s “The Tunnel” is a tragic love story about a mother’s declining health and her daughter’s helplessness as she struggles to balance her responsibility to her mother and her own desires. New author Callan Wink’s “Breatharians” unsettles the reader as a farm boy shoulders a grim chore in the wake of his parents’ estrangement. “Elizabeth Strout was a wonderful reader, an author who knows well that the sound of one’s writing is just as important as and indivisible from the content,” writes series editor Heidi Pitlor. “Here are twenty compellingly told, powerfully felt stories about urgent matters with profound consequences.”

The Millers, an ordinary American family, are travelling to a small island off the coast of Maine where they will celebrate their father's 75th birthday. All three adult children are expecting children of their own and at the same time find themselves at major crossroads in their lives. As the Miller family gathers, an unexpected incident shatters the celebrations and it seems that nobody will emerge quite the same. Written with great emotional and psychological insight, The Birthdays is a journey into the harrowing and redemptive heart of family life.This story of marriage and impending parenthood is certain to establish Heidi Pitlor as a rare new voice in fiction.

Gathers classic short stories by such authors as Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Henry James, O. Henry, Jack London, Dorothy Parker, James Agee, and John Updike

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

In her acclaimed debut novel, Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld created a touchstone with her pitch-perfect portrayal of adolescence. Her prose is as intensely realistic and compelling as ever in The Man of My Dreams, a disarmingly candid and sympathetic novel about the collision of a young woman’s fantasies of family and love with the challenges and realities of adult life. Hannah Gavener is fourteen in the summer of 1991. In the magazines she reads, celebrities plan elaborate weddings; in Hannah’s own life, her parents’ marriage is crumbling. And somewhere in between these two extremes—just maybe—lie the answers to love’s most bewildering questions. But over the next decade and a half, as she moves from Philadelphia to Boston to Albuquerque, Hannah finds that the questions become more rather than less complicated: At what point can you no longer blame your adult failures on your messed-up childhood? Is settling for someone who’s not your soul mate an act of maturity or an admission of defeat? And if you move to another state for a guy who might not love you back, are you being plucky—or just pathetic? None of the relationships in Hannah’s life are without complications. There’s her father, whose stubbornness Hannah realizes she’s unfortunately inherited; her gorgeous cousin, Fig, whose misbehavior alternately intrigues and irritates Hannah; Henry, whom Hannah first falls for in college, while he’s dating Fig; and the boyfriends who love her more or less than she deserves, who adore her or break her heart. By the time she’s in her late twenties, Hannah has finally figured out what she wants most—but she doesn’t yet know whether she’ll find the courage to go after it. Full of honesty and humor, The Man of My Dreams is an unnervingly insightful and beautifully written examination of the outside forces and personal choices that make us who we are.

The award-winning novel of a young American girl in France—hailed as “an impressive debut” that is “written with quiet, lyric forcefulness” (Elle). A New York Times Notable Book Young, inexperienced, and fleeing a terrible personal loss, Rosie—the new au pair to the Tivot family estate in France—finds herself ill at ease when trying to connect with Nicole, the cool, distant, and beautifully polished mother of the three children she cares for. There is something about the woman that both fascinates and unnerves Rosie. The same is true of the rest of the Tivot clan. Nicole’s dissatisfied husband, Marc, and their children all seem to be caught in an unending struggle against each other for love and acceptance. Only when Rosie is sent to care for Nicole’s now-elderly guardian—the storyteller of the family’s secrets—does she finally discover the truth. There, Rosie will learn of a past darkened by war, duplicity, and a tragedy that still resonates in the Tivot’s lives . . . With this novel of family, betrayal, and the naïveté of youth, Lily King has spun a story that is “powerful . . . splendid . . . [and all] so assured that it’s hard to believe the book itself is her debut” (The New York Times Book Review). “Expertly constructed, full of surprises, superbly paced and sweetly sad, King’s book hardly reads like a first novel.” —Publishers Weekly

When the strongest earthquake in U.S. history occurs just north of their St. Louis home, Kate and Jeremy find the disaster further complicated by Kate's twin sister's prediction about a more powerful earthquake.