"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...

#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. Read by a full cast including: Kevin R. Free, Gabra Zackman, Scott...

Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder, Run, and Bel Canto, examines her deepest commitments-- to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband-- creating a resonant portrait of her life.

A breathtaking collection of unabridged stories from the Pulitzer Prize-Winning author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes. Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and the wrong kinds of love. Close Range features stories of desperation, hard times, and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk tales, flights...

Nicole Krauss' first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and her short fiction has been collected in Best American Short Stories. Now The History of Love proves Krauss is among our finest and freshest literary voices. It has been decades since Leo Gursky first surrendered his heart, then wrote a book about it, at the tender age of 10, and he's been in love with the same person ever since. Leo believes...

A stunning collection from international bestseller Stephen King that displays his phenomenally broad readership (stories published in The New Yorker, Playboy, and McSweeney's and including the 25,000 word story "Gingerbread Girl" published in Esquire).
Stephen King—who has written more than fifty books, dozens of number one New York Times bestsellers, and many unforgettable movies—delivers...

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the Paris Review and selected for The Best American Short Stories, 2007 by Stephen King. Angelle's father is a drunk, and Angelle and her little sister, Lisette, know it. Their mother has told them as much. But their mother has abandoned them and gone back to France, leaving only the empty promise to return behind. Now Angelle is the key witness in a case that may decide...

Said Sayrafiezadeh has been hailed by Philip Gourevitch as "a masterful storyteller working from deep in the American grain." His new collection of stories — some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories — are set in a contemporary America full of the kind of emotionally bruised characters familiar to fans of Denis Johnson and George Saunders. These are people contending with internal struggles...

"A bold, wise, magical, and authentic novel about youthful infatuation and its legacy. Hannah Pittard's beautifully confident prose is sure to make readers look back on their own teenage years with fresh wonder." -Vendela Vida, author of The Lovers Already acclaimed for her short fiction-a McSweeney's Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award winner whose work was selected by Salman Rushdie for inclusion in 2008 Best American Short Stories' 100 Distinguished...