The Best American Series
14 Short Stories & Essays
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Part of the Best American ® series
The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction.
This special edition contains selections from the following 2015 editions:
The Best American Essays edited by Ariel Levy
The Best American Mystery Stories edited by James Patterson
The Best American Science and Nature Writing edited by Rebecca Skloot
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Joe Hill
The Best American Short Stories edited by T.C. Boyle
The Best American Travel Writing edited by Andrew McCarthy
The Best American Sports Writing edited by Wright Thompson
Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. The special guest editor then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected — and most popular — of its kind.
The Best American Essays 2013
Part of the Best American ® series
Curated by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wild, this volume shares intimate perspectives from some of today's most acclaimed writers.
As Cheryl Strayed explains in her introduction, "the invisible, unwritten last line of every essay should be and nothing was ever the same again." The reader, in other words, should feel the ground shift, if even only a bit. In this edition of the acclaimed anthology series, Strayed has gathered twenty-six essays that each capture an inexorable, tectonic shift in life.
Personal and deeply perceptive, this collection examines a broad range of life experiences-from a man's relationship with Mormonism to a woman's search for a serial killer; from listening to the music of Joni Mitchell to surviving five months at sea; from triaging injured soldiers to giving birth to a daughter; and much more.
The Best American Essays 2013 includes entries by Alice Munro, Zadie Smith, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Dagoberto Gilb, Vicki Weiqi Yang, J.D. Daniels, Michelle Mirsky, and others.
The Best American Short Stories 2014
Part of the Best American ® series
"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 2014 will be selected by national best-selling author Jennifer Egan, who won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for A Visit from the Goon Squad, heralded by Time magazine as "a new classic of American fiction." Egan "possesses a satirist's eye and a romance novelist's heart" (New York Times Book Review).
The Best American Crime Reporting 2009
Part of the Best American ® series
Edited by Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst and New York Times bestselling author of The Nine, The Best American Crime Reporting 2009 is a must-have for the true crime reader, complete with the most gripping, suspenseful, and brilliant stories of the year by the masters of crime reporting. Featuring stories of fraud, murder, theft, and madness, the Best American Crime Reporting series has been hailed as "arresting reading" (People) and the best mix of "the political, the macabre, and the downright brilliant" (Entertainment Weekly).
The Best American Essays 2021
Part of the Best American ® series
A collection of the year's best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker staff writer Kathryn Schulz
"The world is abundant even in bad times," guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, "it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness." The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year.
The Best American Essays 2021 includes
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER • HILTON ALS • GABRIELLE HAMILTON • RUCHIR JOSHI • PATRICIA LOCKWOOD• CLAIRE MESSUD • WESLEY MORRIS • BETH NGUYEN • JESMYN WARD and others
The Best American Travel Writing 2019
Part of the Best American ® series
An eclectic compendium of the best travel writing essays published in 2018, collected by Alexandra Fuller. BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING gathers together a satisfyingly varied medley of perspectives, all exploring what it means to travel somewhere new. For the past two decades, readers have come to recognize this annual volume as the gold standard for excellence in travel writing.
The Best American Essays 2022
Part of the Best American ® series
A collection of the year's best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2022
by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Part of the Best American ® series
A collection of the best science and nature articles written in 2021, selected by guest editor renowned marine biologist Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and series editor Jaime Green.
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, renowned marine biologist and co-founder of the All We Can Save climate initiative, compiles the best science and nature writing of the year.
The Best American Travel Writing 2016
Part of the Best American ® series
This collection gathers the best travel essays from The New Yorker, Harpers, GQ and more-featuring Paul Theroux, Alice Gregory, Dave Eggers and others.
Why do I travel? Why does anyone of us travel? Bill Bryson poses these questions in his introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2016, and though he admits, "I wasn't at all sure I knew the answer," these questions start us on the path of some fascinating explorations. While the various contributors to this collection travel for different reasons, they all come back with stories.
Whether traversing the Arctic by dogsled, attending a surreal film festival in North Korea, or strolling the streets of a fast-changing Havana, some of today's best travel writers share their experiences of the world and the human condition, offering, if not answers, than illumination and insight.
The Best American Travel Writing 2016 includes Michael Chabon, William T. Vollmann, Helen Macdonald, Sara Corbett, Stephanie Pearson, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Pico Iyer, and others.
The Best American Short Stories 2018
Part of the Best American ® series
Synopsis currently unavailable.
The Best American Short Stories 2019
Part of the Best American ® series
#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.
"As soon as you complete a description of what a good story must be, a new example flutters through an open window, lands on your sleeve, and proves your description wrong," writes Anthony Doerr about the task of selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. The year's best stories are a diverse, addictive group exploring everything from America's rich rural culture to its online teen culture to the fragile nature of the therapist-client relationship. This astonishing collection brings together the realistic and dystopic, humor and terror. For Doerr, "with every new artist, we simultaneously refine and expand our understanding of what the form can be."
The Best American Short Stories 2019 includes Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Jamel Brinkley, Jeffrey Eugenides, Ursula K. Le Guin, Manuel Muñoz, Sigrid Nunez, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Jim Shepherd, Weike Wang, and others.
The Best of the Best American Mystery Stories
The First Ten Years
Part of the Best American ® series
This compilation collects the top twenty stories from the first decade (1997—2006) of The Best American Mystery Stories, selected and introduced by Otto Penzler. Contributors include Russell Banks, James Lee Burke, Brendan DuBois, Lou Manfredo, Ed McBain, Joyce Carol Oates, and many others.
The Best American Food Writing 2020
Part of the Best American ® series
The year's top food writing from writers who celebrate the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country.
"These are stories about culture," writes J. Kenji López-Alt in his introduction. "About how food shapes people, neighborhoods, and history." This year's Best American Food Writing captures the food industry at a critical moment in history - from the confrontation of abusive kitchen culture, to the disappearance of the supermarkets, to the rise and fall of celebrity chefs, to the revolution of baby food. Spanning from New York's premier restaurants to the chile factories of New Mexico, this collection lifts a curtain on how food arrives on our plates, revealing extraordinary stories behind what we eat and how we live.
THE BEST AMERICAN FOOD WRITING 2020 INCLUDES
BURKHARD BILGER, KAT KINSMAN, LAURA HAYES, TAMAR HASPEL, SHO SPAETH, TIM MURPHY and others
The Best American Series: Short Stories & Essays
Part of the Best American ® series
A collection of eleven fiction and nonfiction selections from the 2011 editions of the Best American Series, highlighting 2011's best American writing.
The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. The guest editor then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected-and most popular-of its kind.
This special ebook contains eleven selections from the 2011 editions.
From The Best American Short Stories edited by Geraldine Brooks:
"Housewifely Arts" by Megan Mayhew Bergman
"Phantoms" by Steven Millhauser
From The Best American Essays edited by Edwidge Danticat:
"Chapels" by Pico Iyer
"There Are Things Awry Here" by Lia Purpura
From The Best American Mystery Stories edited by Harlan Coben:
"A Crime of Opportunity" by Ernest J. Finney
From The Best American Science and Nature Writing edited by Mary Roach:
"The Killer in the Pool" by Tim Zimmermann
"The Whole Fracking Enchilada" by Sandra Steingraber
From The Best American Sports Writing edited by Jane Leavy:
"The Surfing Savant" by Paul Solotaroff
"New Mike, Old Christine" by Nancy Hass
From The Best American Travel Writing edited by Sloane Crosley:
"My Year at Sea" by Christopher Buckley "Miami Party Boom" by Emily Witt
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015
Part of the Best American ® series
This anthology of essays and articles explores topics ranging from untouched wilderness to scientific ethics-and the nature of curiosity itself.
Scientists and writers are both driven by a dogged curiosity, immersing themselves in detailed observations that, over time, uncover larger stories. As Rebecca Skloot says in her introduction, all the stories in this collection are "written by and about people who take the time, and often a substantial amount of risk, to follow curiosity where it may lead, so we can all learn about it."
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015 includes work from both award-winning writers and up-and-coming voices in the field. From Brooke Jarvis on deep-ocean mining to Elizabeth Kolbert on New Zealand's unconventional conservation strategies, this is a group that celebrates the growing diversity in science and nature writing alike. Altogether, the writers honored in this volume challenge us to consider the strains facing our planet and its many species, while never losing sight of the wonders we're working to preserve for generations to come. This anthology includes essays and articles by Sheri Fink, Atul Gawande, Leslie Jamison, Sam Kean, Seth Mnookin, Matthew Power, Michael Specter and others.
The Best American Comics 2018
Part of the Best American ® series
"I love comics. Comics is (Comics ARE?) a perfect language, robustly evolving and expanding like any other living language," writes Phoebe Gloeckner in her Introduction to The Best American Comics 2018. This year's collection includes work selected from the pages of graphic novels, comic books, periodicals, zines, online, and more, highlighting the kaleidoscopic diversity of the comics language today.
Featuring GABRIELLE BELL • TARA BOOTH • GEOF DARROW • GUY DELISLE • EMIL FERRIS • JULIA GFRÖRER • SARAH GLIDDEN • SIMON HANSELMANN • JAIME HERNANDEZ • JULIA JACQUETTE • GARY PANTER • ARIEL SCHRAG, and others
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013
Part of the Best American ® series
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee, a leading cancer physician and researcher, selects the year's top science and nature writing from journalists who dive into their fields with curiosity and passion, delivering must-read articles from a wide array of fields.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019
Part of the Best American ® series
This omnivorous selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and World Fantasy Award finalist Carmen Maria Machado is a display of the most boundary-pushing, genre-blurring, stylistically singular science fiction and fantasy stories published in the last year. By sending us to alternate universes and chronicling ordinary magic, introducing us to mythical beasts and talking animals, and engaging with a wide spectrum of emotion from tenderness to fear, each of these stories challenge the way we see our place in the cosmos. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 represents a wide range of the most accomplished voices working in science fiction and fantasy, in fiction, today-each story dazzles with ambition, striking prose, and the promise of the other and the unencountered.
The Best American Travel Writing 2020
Part of the Best American ® series
The year's best travel writing, as chosen by series editor Jason Wilson and guest editor Robert Macfarlane.
Writing, reading, and dreaming about travel have surged, writes Robert MacFarlane in his introduction to the Best American Travel Writing 2020. From an existential reckoning in avalanche school, to an act of kindness at the Mexican-American border, to a moral dilemma at a Kenyan orphanage, the journeys showcased in this collection are as spiritual as they are physical. These stories provide not just remarkable entertainment, but also, as MacFarlane says, deep comfort, "carrying hope, creating connections, transporting readers to other-worlds, and imagining alternative presents and alternative futures."
The Best American Travel 2020 includes
HEIDI JULAVITS • YIYUN LI • PAUL SALOPEK • LACY JOHNSON • EMMANUEL IDUMA • JON MOOALLEM • EMILY RABOTEAU and others
The Best American Sports Writing 2011
Part of the Best American ® series
The Best American Series®
First, Best, and Best-Selling
The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected-and most popular-of its kind.
The Best American Sports Writing 2011 includes:
Paul Solotaroff, Sally Jenkins, Wells Tower, John McPhee, David Dobbs, Wright Thompson, P. J. O'Rourke, Selena Roberts, and others.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016
Part of the Best American ® series
This anthology collects some of the year's best science and nature writing-from climate change to killer beetles, an exposé of nail salons, and more.
As guest editor, Amy Stewart says in her introduction, "science writers get into the game with all kinds of noble, high-minded ambitions. We want to educate. To enlighten...But at the end of the day, we're all writers. We're just like novelists, memoirists, and poets. We're entertainers." The writers in this anthology pull off that wonderful feat of turning hard research into page-turning narrative.
The Best American Mystery Stories 2016
Part of the Best American ® series
The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 is a feast of both literary crime and hard-boiled detection, featuring a seemingly innocent murderer, a drug dealer in love, a drunken prank gone terribly wrong, and plenty of other surprising twists and turns.
The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 includes entries by Steve Almond, Megan Abbott, Matt Bell, Lydia Fitzpatrick, Tom Franklin, Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and others.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012
Part of the Best American ® series
Synopsis currently unavailable.
The Best American Essays 2015
Part of the Best American ® series
Writing an essay is like catching a wave, posits guest editor Ariel Levy. To catch a wave, you need skill and nerve, not just moving water. The writers featured in this volume are certainly full of nerve, and have crafted a wide range of pieces awash in a diversity of moods, voices, and stances.
Leaving an abusive marriage, parting with a younger self, losing your sanity to Fitbit, and even saying goodbye to a beloved pair of pants are just some of the experience probed by essays that are unified in the daring of their creation. As Levy notes, Writing around an idea you think is worthwhile-an idea you suspect is an insight-requires real audacity.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017
Part of the Best American ® series
Science fiction and fantasy can encompass so much, from far-future deep-space sagas to quiet contemporary tales to unreal kingdoms and beasts. But what the best of these stories do is the same across the genres-they illuminate the whole gamut of the human experience, interrogating our hopes and our fears. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Charles Yu, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 continues to explore the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today, with Yu bringing his unique view-literary, meta, and adventurous-to the series' third edition.
The Best American Essays 2017
Part of the Best American ® series
From the Iraqi desert to an East Jerusalem refugee camp, and from the beginnings of the universe to the aftermath of a suicide attempt, these essays bring us, time and again, to the thorny intersection of personal experience and public discourse.
The Best American Essays 2017 includes entries by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Lawrence Jackson, Rachel Kushner, Alan Lightman, Bernard Farai Matambo, Wesley Morris, Heather Sellers, Andrea Stuart, and others.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011
Part of the Best American ® series
The New York Times—bestselling author of Packing for Mars presents fascinating essays by Jonathan Lethem, Jaron Lanier, Malcom Gladwell and others.
Good science writing, as Mary Roach explains in her introduction, is a cure for ignorance and fallacy. But great science writing adds honey-in the form of engaging characters, stories, and wit-to make the medicine go down. This anthology reveals the essential humanity in our endless quest for knowledge and understanding.
From a study of avian mating habits with unintended political implications to a sober exploration of the panic surrounding artificial intelligence, The Best Science and Nature Writing 2011 offers food for thought in a variety of flavors.
The Best Science and Nature Writing 2011 includes entries by Deborah Blum, Burkhard Bilger, Ian Frazier, David H. Freedman, Atul Gawande, Stephen Hawking, Christopher Ketcham, Jill Sisson Quinn, Oliver Sachs, and others.
The Best American Essays 2012
Part of the Best American ® series
Whether a personal reflection on a wife's decline from Alzheimer's, a critique of the overdiagnosis of mood disorders, a lighthearted look at menopause, a friend's commentary on David Foster Wallace's heartbreaking suicide, or a memoir of teaching underprivileged children, this collection highlights the best essays of the year with contributions from:
Benjamin Anastas • Marcia Angell • Miah Arnold • Geoffrey Bent • Robert Boyers • Dudley Clendinen • Paul Collins • Mark Doty • Mark Edmundson • Joseph Epstein • Jonathan Franzen • Malcolm Gladwell • Peter Hessler • Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough • Garret Keizer • David J. Lawless • Alan Lightman • Sandra Tsing Loh • Ken Murray • Francine Prose • Richard Sennett • Lauren Slater • Jose Antonio Vargas • Wesley Yang
"A trove of fine writing on big issues." -Kirkus Reviews
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014
Part of the Best American ® series
Synopsis currently unavailable.
The Best American Travel Writing 2014
Part of the Best American ® series
A far-ranging collection of the best travel writing pieces published in 2013, collected by guest editor Paul Theroux. The Best American Travel Writing consistently includes a wide variety of pieces, illuminating the wonder, humor, fear, and exhilaration that greets all of us when we embark on a journey to a new place. Readers know that there is simply no other option when they want great travel writing.
The Best American Sports Writing 2013
Part of the Best American ® series
J. R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize—winning feature writer and the author of The Tender Bar, has selected the best in sports writing from the past year. Chosen from more than 350 national, regional, and specialty publications and, increasingly, the top sports blogs, this collection showcases those journalists who are at the top of their game.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2019
Part of the Best American ® series
"Science and nature writing are how we share the truth about the universe with the people of the world." And collected here are truths about nearly every corner of the universe. From meditations on extinction, to the search for alien life, to the prejudice that infects our medical system, the pieces in this year's Best American Science and Nature Writing seek to bring to the people stories of some of the most pressing issues facing our planet, as well as moments of wonder reflecting the immense beauty our natural world offers.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015
Part of the Best American ® series
Science fiction and fantasy enjoy a long literary tradition, stretching from Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, and Jules Verne to Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, and William Gibson. In The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2015 award-winning editor John Joseph Adams delivers a diverse and vibrant collection of stories published in the previous year. Featuring writers with deep science fiction and fantasy backgrounds, along with those who are infusing traditional fiction with speculative elements, these stories uphold a longstanding tradition in both genres looking at the world and asking, What if...? The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2015 includes Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman, Karen Russell T. C. Boyle, Sofia Samatar, Jo Walton, Cat Rambo Daniel H. Wilson, Seanan McGuire, Jess Row and others.
The Best American Sports Writing 2018
Part of the Best American ® series
For more than twenty-five years, The Best American Sports Writing has built a solid reputation by showcasing the greatest sports journalism of the previous year, culled from hundreds of national, regional, and specialty print and digital publications. Each year, the series editor and guest editor curate a truly exceptional collection. The only shared traits among all these diverse styles, voices, and stories are the extraordinarily high caliber of writing, and the pure passion they tap into that can only come from sports.
The Best American Sports Writing 2017
Part of the Best American ® series
For a quarter century, the annual Best American Sports Writing has showcased the greatest sports journalism of the previous year. This year's guest editor, acclaimed author Howard Bryant, continues the tradition, seeking out writing that best captures the unpredictable journey of sports. Triumphantly and painfully, these stories reflect on that journey, asking difficult questions about who we are, as individuals and as a nation: What does it mean when a football player takes a knee during the national anthem, who decides where the remains of an American legend should rest, and how far will people go to reclaim dreams that have long slipped away? Spanning different sports, disciplines, and styles, these pieces are, above all, inspirational to readers, writers, and athletes around the world, proof of the bonds and breaking points that exist between and within us all.
The Best American Short Stories 2021
Part of the Best American ® series
A collection of the year's best stories selected by celebrated two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward
In her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2021, guest editor Jesmyn Ward says that the best fiction offers the reader a "sense of repair." The stories in this year's collection accomplish just that, immersing the reader in powerfully imagined worlds and allowing them to bring some of that power into their own lives. From a stirring portrait of Rodney King's final days to a surreal video game set in the Middle East, with real consequences, to an indigenous boy's gripping escape from his captors, this collection renders profoundly empathetic depictions of the variety of human experience. These stories are poignant reminders of the possibilities of fiction: as you sink into world after world, become character after character, as Ward writes, you "forget yourself, and then, upon surfacing, know yourself and others anew."
The Best American Short Stories 2021 includes
GABRIEL BUMP • BRANDON HOBSON • DAVID MEANS • JANE PEK • TRACEY ROSE PEYTON • GEORGE SAUNDERS • BRYAN WASHINGTON • KEVIN WILSON • C PAM ZHANG and others.
The Best American Sports Writing 2012
Part of the Best American ® series
The Best American Series®
First, Best, and Best-Selling
The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected - and most popular - of its kind.
The Best American Travel Writing 2011
Part of the Best American ® series
The Best American Series®
First, Best, and Best-Selling
The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected-and most popular-of its kind.
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018
Part of the Best American ® series
"This is one of the most exciting times in the history of science," New York Times-bestselling author Sam Kean proclaims in his introduction to The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018. "Things aren't perfect by any means. But there are more scientists making more discoveries in more places about more things than ever before." The twenty-six pieces assembled here chart the full spectrum of those discoveries. From the outer reaches of space, to the mysteries of the human mind, to the changing culture in labs and universities across the nation, we see time and again the sometimes rocky, sometimes revelatory road to understanding, and along the way catch a glimpse of all that's left to learn.
The Best American Food Writing 2023
Part of the Best American ® series
A collection of the year's top food writing, selected by prolific food writer and author of “How to Cook Everything” Mark Bittman.
The Best American Travel Writing 2012
Part of the Best American ® series
The Best American Series®
First, Best, and Best-Selling
The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected - and most popular - of its kind.
The Best American Travel Writing 2012 includes
Bryan Curtis, Lynn Freed, J. Malcolm Garcia, Peter Gwin,
Pico Iyer, Mark Jenkins, Dimiter Kenarov, Robin Kirk,
Kimberly Meyer, Paul Theroux, and others
The Best American Mystery Stories 2019
Part of the Best American ® series
New York Times best-selling author of ten genre-bending novels Jonathan Lethem helms this collection of the year's best mystery short fiction.
For Jonathan Lethem, "crime stories are deep species gossip." He writes in his introduction that "they're fundamentally stories of power, of its exercise, both spontaneous and conspiratorial, stories of impulse and desire, and of the turning of tables." The Best American Mystery Stories 2019 has its full share of salacious intrigue, guilt, and retribution. The twists and bad decisions pile up when a thief picks the wrong target or a simple scavenger hunt takes a terrible turn. What happens when you befriend a death row inmate, or just how does writing Internet clickbait became a decidedly dangerous occupation? "How can we not hang on their outcomes?" asks Lethem. "Are we innocent ourselves, or complicit?" Read on to find out.
The Best American Mystery Stories 2019 includes Sharon Hunt, Harley Jane Kozak, Mark Mayer, Jennifer McMahon, Joyce Carol Oates, Brian Panowich, Tonya D. Price, Ron Rash, Robb T. White, and others.
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018
Part of the Best American ® series
Sheila Heti, author of the acclaimed How a Person Should Be? and coeditor of the best-selling anthology Women in Clothes, along with the students of 826 Valencia writing lab will edit this year's anthology. Their compilation includes new fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and the category-defying gems that have become one of the hallmarks of this lively collection.
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014
Part of the Best American ® series
"Lively, eclectic and surprising." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, author of the enormously popular young adult series A Series of Unfortunate Events, takes over as editor for this volume. He will work with the students of 826 Valencia and 826 Michigan writing labs to compile new fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and other category-defying gems, ensuring that "if you need to fall in love with reading again - or just want a reminder that high school students deserve a lot more than their reading lists give them - then this is the book for you" (Bust).
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2010
Part of the Best American ® series
Freeman Dyson, renowned physicist and public intellectual, edits this year's volume of the finest science and nature writing.
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019
Part of the Best American ® series
An eclectic collection of fiction, essays, poetry, and graphic work selected by high school students with the help of New York Times best-selling author Edan Lepucki.
Over the past year, a group of high school students have held weekly discussions in the basement conference room of a publishing house in San Francisco. Tasked with finding the best, most revealing, honest, and astonishing writing of the last twelve months, they pored over hundreds of published poems, stories, comics, and essays. With the help of guest editor Edan Lepucki, they selected the contents of this anthology, a collection of work they feel looks a lot like 2019. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 features comics about war and butts and stories about pizza-delivery women, family, dolls giving birth, anthropomorphic lakes, and more. It was a successful year. Read on to see for yourself.
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019 includes Viet Thanh Nguyen, Charles Johnson, Robin Coste Lewis, Garth Greenwell, Nathaniel Russell, Britteney Black Rose Kapri, Andrea Long Chu, Deborah Taffa, Renée Branum, and others.
The Best American Sports Writing 2020
Part of the Best American ® series
The latest addition to the acclaimed series showcasing the best sports writing from the past year.
For over twenty-five years, The Best American Sports Writing has built a solid reputation by showcasing the greatest sports journalism of the previous year, culled from hundreds of national, regional, and specialty print and digital publications. Each year, the series editor and guest editor curate a truly exceptional collection. The only shared traits among all these diverse styles, voices, and stories are the extraordinarily high caliber of writing, and the pure passion they tap into that can only come from sports.
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013
Part of the Best American ® series
Dave Eggers and his students at the 826 Valencia and 826 Michigan writing labs compile fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and comics, as well as category-defying gems that have become one of the hallmarks of this lively collection.