Louise Erdrich Books In Order

Birchbark House Books In Publication Order

  1. The Birchbark House (1999)
  2. The Game of Silence (2005)
  3. The Porcupine Year (2008)
  4. Chickadee (2012)
  5. Makoons (2016)

Love Medicine Books In Publication Order

  1. Love Medicine (1984)
  2. The Beet Queen (1985)
  3. Tracks (1988)
  4. The Bingo Palace (1994)
  5. Tales of Burning Love (1996)
  6. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2000)
  7. Four Souls (2004)
  8. The Painted Drum (2005)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Crown of Columbus (With: Michael Dorris) (1991)
  2. The Antelope Wife / Antelope Woman (1998)
  3. The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003)
  4. The Plague of Doves (2008)
  5. Shadow Tag (2010)
  6. The Round House (2012)
  7. LaRose (2016)
  8. Future Home of the Living God (2017)
  9. The Night Watchman (2020)
  10. The Sentence (2021)

Picture Books In Publication Order

  1. Grandmother’s Pigeon (1996)
  2. The Range Eternal (2002)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Imagination (1982)
  2. Route Two (With: Michael Dorris) (1990)
  3. Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris (1994)
  4. The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year (1995)
  5. Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (2003)

Collections In Publication Order

  1. Jacklight (1984)
  2. Baptism of Desire (1990)
  3. Original Fire (2003)
  4. The Red Convertible (2009)

Best American Short Stories Books In Publication Order

  1. The Best Short Stories of 1915 (1916)
  2. The Best Short Stories of 1916 (1916)
  3. The Best Short Stories of 1917 (1917)
  4. The Best Short Stories of 1918 (1918)
  5. The Best Short Stories of 1919 (1919)
  6. The Best Short Stories of 1921 (1921)
  7. The Best Short Stories of 1922 (1922)
  8. The Best Short Stories of 1923 (1923)
  9. The Best Short Stories 1924 (1924)
  10. The Best Short Stories of 1925 (1925)
  11. The Best Short Stories 1926 (1926)
  12. The Best Short Stories 1927 (1927)
  13. The Best Short Stories of 1928 (1928)
  14. The Best Short Stories of 1929 (1929)
  15. The Best Short Stories 1930 (1930)
  16. The Best Short Stories 1931 (1931)
  17. The Best Short Stories of 1932 (1932)
  18. The Best Short Stories 1933 (1933)
  19. The Best Short Stories 1934 (1934)
  20. The Best Short Stories 1935 (1935)
  21. The Best Short Stories 1936 (1936)
  22. The Best Short Stories 1937 (1937)
  23. The Best Short Stories of 1938 (1938)
  24. 50 Best American Short Stories, 1915-1939 (1939)
  25. The Best Short Stories 1939 (1939)
  26. The Best Short Stories of 1940 (1940)
  27. The Best Short Stories 1941 (1941)
  28. The Best American Short Stories 1942 (1942)
  29. The Best American Short Stories 1943 (1943)
  30. The Best American Short Stories 1944 (1944)
  31. The Best American Short Stories 1945 (1945)
  32. The Best American Short Stories 1946 (1946)
  33. The Best American Short Stories 1947 (1947)
  34. The Best American Short Stories 1948 (1948)
  35. The Best American Short Stories 1949 (1949)
  36. The Best American Short Stories 1950 (1950)
  37. The Best American Short Stories 1951 (1951)
  38. The Best American Short Stories 1952 (1952)
  39. The Best American Short Stories 1953 (1953)
  40. The Best American Short Stories 1955 (1955)
  41. The Best American Short Stories 1956 (1956)
  42. The Best American Short Stories 1957 (1957)
  43. The Best American Short Stories 1958 (1958)
  44. The Best American Short Stories 1959 (1959)
  45. The Best American Short Stories 1960 (1960)
  46. The Best American Short Stories 1961 (1961)
  47. The Best American Short Stories 1962 (1962)
  48. The Best American Short Stories 1963 (1963)
  49. The Best American Short Stories 1964 (1964)
  50. The Best American Short Stories 1965 (1965)
  51. The Best American Short Stories 1966 (1966)
  52. The Best American Short Stories 1967 (1967)
  53. The Best American Short Stories 1968 (1967)
  54. The Best American Short Stories of 1969 (1969)
  55. The Best American Short Stories 1970 (1970)
  56. The Best American Short Stories 1971 (1971)
  57. The Best American Short Stories 1972 (1972)
  58. The Best American Short Stories 1973 (1973)
  59. The Best American Short Stories 1974 (1974)
  60. The Best of Best American Short Stories 1915-1950 (1975)
  61. The Best American Short Stories 1975 (1975)
  62. The Best American Short Stories 1976 (1976)
  63. The Best American Short Stories 1977 (1977)
  64. The Best American Short Stories 1978 (1978)
  65. The Best American Short Stories 1979 (1979)
  66. The Best American Short Stories 1980 (1980)
  67. The Best American Short Stories 1981 (1981)
  68. The Best American Short Stories 1982 (1982)
  69. The Best American Short Stories 1983 (1983)
  70. The Best American Short Stories 1984 (1984)
  71. The Best American Short Stories 1985 (1985)
  72. The Best American Short Stories 1986 (1986)
  73. The Best American Short Stories 1987 (1987)
  74. The Best American Short Stories 1988 (1988)
  75. The Best American Short Stories 1989 (1989)
  76. The Best American Short Stories of the Eighties (1990)
  77. The Best American Short Stories 1990 (1990)
  78. The Best American Short Stories 1991 (1991)
  79. The Best American Short Stories 1992 (1992)
  80. The Best American Short Stories 1993 (1993)
  81. The Best American Short Stories 1994 (1994)
  82. The Best American Short Stories 1995 (1995)
  83. The Best American Short Stories 1996 (1996)
  84. The Best American Short Stories 1997 (1997)
  85. The Best American Short Stories 1998 (1998)
  86. The Best American Short Stories 1999 (1999)
  87. The Best American Short Stories 2000 (2000)
  88. The Best American Short Stories of the Century (2000)
  89. The Best American Short Stories 2001 (2001)
  90. The Best American Short Stories 2002 (2002)
  91. The Best American Short Stories 2003 (2003)
  92. The Best American Short Stories 2004 (2004)
  93. The Best American Short Stories 2005 (2005)
  94. The Best American Short Stories 2006 (2006)
  95. The Best American Short Stories 2007 (2007)
  96. The Best Short Stories of 1921, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story (2007)
  97. The Best American Short Stories1921 (2007)
  98. The Best American Short Stories 2008 (2008)
  99. The Best American Short Stories 2009 (2009)
  100. The Best American Short Stories 2010 (2010)
  101. The Best American Short Stories 2011 (2011)
  102. The Best American Short Stories 2012 (2012)
  103. The Best American Short Stories 2013 (2013)
  104. The Best American Short Stories 2014 (2014)
  105. The Best American Short Stories 2015 (2015)
  106. 100 Years of The Best American Short Stories (2015)
  107. The Best American Short Stories 2016 (2016)
  108. The Best American Short Stories 2017 (2017)
  109. The Best American Short Stories 2018 (2018)
  110. The Best American Short Stories 2019 (2019)
  111. The Best American Short Stories 2020 (2020)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Writer’s Library (2020)

Birchbark House Book Covers

Love Medicine Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Picture Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Best American Short Stories Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Louise Erdrich Books Overview

The Birchbark House

‘ In this story of a young Ojibwa girl, Omakayas, living on an island in Lake Superior around 1847, Louise Erdrich is reversing the narrative perspective used in most children’s stories about nineteenth century Native Americans. Instead of looking out at ‘them’ as dangers or curiosities, Erdrich, drawing on her family’s history, wants to tell about ‘us’, from the inside. The Birchbark House establishes its own ground, in the vicinity of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s ‘Little House’ books.’ The New York Times Book Review

The Game of Silence

Her name is Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop, and she lives on an island in Lake Superior. It is 1850, and the lives of the Ojibwe have returned to a familiar rhythm: they build their birchbark houses in the summer, go to the ricing camps in the fall to harvest and feast, and move to their cozy cedar log cabins near the town of LaPointe before the first snows.

The satisfying routines of Omakayas’s days are interrupted by a surprise visit from a group of desperate and mysterious people. From them, she learns that all their lives may drastically change. The chimookomanag, or white people, want Omakayas and her people to leave their island in Lake Superior and move farther west. Omakayas realizes that something so valuable, so important that she never knew she had it in the first place, is in danger: Her home. Her way of life.

In this captivating sequel to National Book Award nominee The Birchbark House, Louise Erdrich continues the story of Omakayas and her family.

The Porcupine Year

Here follows the story of a most extraordinary year in the life of an Ojibwe family and of a girl named ‘Omakayas,’ or Little Frog, who lived a year of flight and adventure, pain and joy, in 1852. When Omakayas is twelve winters old, she and her family set off on a harrowing journey. They travel by canoe westward from the shores of Lake Superior along the rivers of northern Minnesota, in search of a new home. While the family has prepared well, unexpected danger, enemies, and hardships will push them to the brink of survival. Omakayas continues to learn from the land and the spirits around her, and she discovers that no matter where she is, or how she is living, she has the one thing she needs to carry her through. Richly imagined, full of laughter and sorrow, The Porcupine Year continues Louise Erdrich’s celebrated series, which began with The Birchbark House, a National Book Award finalist, and continued with The Game of Silence, winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction.

Love Medicine

Beautiful reissue of Louise Erdrich’s most famous novel, from one of the most celebrated American writers of her generation. Set on and around a North Dakota reservation, ‘Love Medicine‘ tells of the intertwined fates of two families, the Lamartines and the Kashpaws. The women at the heart of this extraordinary community are survivors in a harsh and tumultuous world, united and sustained by the strength and diversity of their love the sweet delusion of the flesh; the powerful pull of blood ties; the affection for the old ways vying with the irresistible lure of the new. Their voices mingle and blend to form a continuous braided sequence of narratives which pulse with the sheer energy and drama of life. Greeted with great critical acclaim when first published in 1984, ‘Love Medicine‘ won the US National Book Critics’ Circle Award. Louise Erdrich has now substantially revised and expanded the novel for this edition, to complement its companion novels, ‘The Beet Queen, Tracks’ and ‘The Bingo Palace’.

The Beet Queen

Now, from the award winning author of Love Medicine, comes a vibrant tale of abandonment and sexual obsession, jealousy and unstinting love. On a spring morning in 1932, young Karl and Mary Adare arrive by boxcar in Argus, North Dakota. Orphaned in a most peculiar way, Karl and Mary look for refuge to their mother’s sister Fritzie, who with her husband, Pete, runs a butcher shop. So begins an exhilerating 40 year saga brim*ming with unforgettable characters: Ordinary Mary, who causes a miracle ; seductive Karl, who lacks Mary’s gift for survival; Sita, their lovely, disturbed, ambitious cousin; Wallace Pfef, a town leader bearing a lonely secret; Celestine James, a mixed blood Chippewa; and her daughter, Dot. Theirs is a story grounded in the tenacity of relationships, the magic of natural events and the unending mystery of the human condition.

Tracks

Set in North Dakota at a time in this century when Indian tribes were struggling to keep what little remained of their lands, Tracks is a tale of passion and deep unrest. Over the course of ten crucial years, as tribal land and trust between people erode ceaselessly, men and women are pushed to the brink of their endurance yet their pride and humor prohibit surrender. The reader will experience shock and pleasure in encountering a group of characters that are compelling and rich in their vigor, clarity, and indomitable vitality.

The Bingo Palace

At the crossroads of his life, Lipsha Morrissey is summoned by his grandmother to return to the reservation. There, he falls in love for the very first time with the beautiful Shawnee Ray, who’s already considering a marriage proposal from Lipsha’s wealthy entrepreneurial boss, Lyman Lamartine. But when all efforts to win Shawnee’s affections go hopelessly awry, Lipsha seeks out his great grandmother for a magical solution to his romantic dilemma on sacred ground where a federally sanctioned bingo palace is slated for construction. Louise Erdrich’s luminous novel The Bingo Palace is a tale of spiritual death and reawakening; of money, desperate love, and wild hope; and of the enduring power of cherished dreams.

Tales of Burning Love

In her boldest and most darkly humorous novel yet, award winning, critically acclaimed and bestselling novelist Louise Erdrich tells the intimate and powerful stories of five Great Plains women whose lives are connected through one man. Stranded in a North Dakota blizzard, Jack Mauser’s former wives huddle for warmth and pass the endless night by remembering the stories of how each came to love, marry and ultimately move beyond Jack. At times painful, at times heartbreaking and often times comic, their tales become the adhesive that holds them together in their love for Jack and in their lives as women. Erdrich, with her characteristic powers of observation and luminescent prose, brings these women’s unforgettable stories to life with astonishing candor and warmth. Filled with keen perceptions about the apparatus for survival, the force of passion and the necessity of hope, Tales of Burning Love is a tour de force from one of the most formidable American writers at work today.

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved people, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. Compelled to his task by a direct mystical experience, Father Damien has made enormous sacrifices, and experienced the joys of commitment as well as deep suffering. Now, nearing the end of his life, Father Damien dreads the discovery of his physical identity, for he is a woman who has lived as a man. He imagines the undoing of all that he has accomplished sees unions unsundered, baptisms nullified, those who confessed to him once again unforgiven. To complicate his fears, his quiet life changes when a troubled colleague comes to the reservation to investigate the life of the perplexing, difficult, possibly false saint Sister Leopolda. Father Damien alone knows the strange truth of Sister Leopolda’s piety, but these facts are bound up in his own secret. In relating his history and that of Leopolda, whose wonder working is documented but inspired, he believes, by a capacity for evil rather than the love of good, Father Damien is forced to choose: Should he reveal all he knows and risk everything? Or should he manufacture a protective history? In spinning out the tale of his life, Father Damien in fact does both. His story encompas*ses his life as a young woman, her passions, and the pestilence, tribal hatreds, and sorrows passed from generation to generation of Ojibwe. From the fantastic truth of Father Damien’s origin as a woman to the hilarious account of the absurd demise of Nanapush, his best friend on the reservation, his story ranges over the span of the century. In a masterwork that both deepens and enlarges the world of her previousnovels set on the same reservation, Louise Erdrich captures the essence of a time and the spirit of a woman who felt compelled by her beliefs to serve her people as a priest. ‘The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse‘ is a work of an avid heart, a writer’s writer, and a storytelling genius.

Four Souls

A strange and compelling unkillable woman decides to leave home, and the story begins. Fleur Pillager takes her mother’s name, Four Souls, for strength and walks from her Ojibwe reservation to the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. She is seeking restitution from and revenge on the lumber baron who has stripped her reservation. But revenge is never simple, and she quickly finds her intentions complicated by her own dangerous compassion for the man who wronged her. The two narrators of Four Souls are from utterly different worlds. Nanapush, a ‘smart man and a fool,’ is both Fleur’s savior and her conscience. He tells Fleur’s story and tells his own. He would like a calm and discriminating love with his sweetheart, Margaret. He is old and would like to face death with his love beside him. Instead the two find themselves battling out their last years. When the childhood nemesis of Nanapush appears and casts his eye toward Margaret, Nanapush acts out an absurd revenge of his own and nearly ends up destroying everything. The other narrator, Polly Elizabeth Gheen, is a pretentious and vulnerable upper crust fringe element, a hanger on in a wealthy Minneapolis family, a woman aware of her precarious hold on those around her. To her own great surprise the entrance of Fleur Pillager into her household and her life effects a transformation she could never have predicted. In the world of interconnected novels by Louise Erdrich, Four Souls is most closely linked to Tracks. All these works continue and elaborate the intricate story of life on a reservation peopled by saints and false saints, heroes and sinners, clever fools and tenacious women. Four Souls reminds us of the deep spirituality and the ordinary humanity of this world, and is as beautiful and lyrical as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

The Painted Drum

When a woman named Faye Travers is called upon to appraise the estate of a family in her small New Hampshire town, she isn’t surprised to discover a forgotten cache of valuable Native American artifacts. After all, the family descends from an Indian agent who worked on the North Dakota Ojibwe reservation that is home to her mother’s family. However, she stops dead in her tracks when she finds in the collection a rare drum a powerful yet delicate object, made from a massive moose skin stretched across a hollow of cedar, ornamented with symbols she doesn’t recognize and dressed in red tassels and a beaded belt and skirt especially since, without touching the instrument, she hears it sound. From Faye’s discovery, we trace the drum’s passage both backward and forward in time, from the reservation on the northern plains to New Hampshire and back. Through the voice of Bernard Shaawano, an Ojibwe, we hear how his grandfather fashioned the drum after years of mourning his young daughter’s death, and how it changes the lives of those whose paths its crosses. And through Faye we hear of her anguished relationship with a local sculptor, who himself mourns the loss of a daughter, and of the life she has made alone with her mother, in the shadow of the death of Faye’s sister. Through these compelling voices, The Painted Drum explores the strange power that lost children exert on the memories of those they leave behind, and as the novel unfolds, its elegantly crafted narrative comes to embody the intricate, transformative rhythms of human grief. One finds throughout the grace and wit, the captivating prose and surprising beauty, that characterize Louise Erdrich’s finest work.

The Crown of Columbus (With: Michael Dorris)

In their only fully collaborative literary work, Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich have written a gripping novel of history, suspense, recovery, and new beginnings. The Crown of Columbus chronicles the adventures of a pair of mismatched lovers Vivian Twostar, a divorced, pregnant anthropologist, and Roger Williams, a consummate academic, epic poet, and bewildered father of Vivian’s baby on their quest for the truth about Christopher Columbus and themselves. When Vivian uncovers what is presumed to be the most diary of Christopher Columbus, she and Roger are drawn into a journey from icy New Hampshire to the idyllic Caribbean in search of ‘the greatest treasure of Europe.’ Lured by the wild promise of redeeming the past, they are plunged into a harrowing race against time and death that threatens and finally changes their lives. A rollicking tale of adventure, The Crown of Columbus is also contemporary love story and a tender examination of parenthood and passion.

The Antelope Wife / Antelope Woman

‘Family stories repeat themselves in patterns and waves, generation to generation, across blood and time. Once the pattern is set, we go on replicating it.’

Louise Erdrich, The Antelope Wife

Rooted in the landscape of city life, yet continually influenced by the power of the Ojibwa family, the intricacies of Ojibwa language and religious belief, The Antelope Wife reflects the irrevocable patterns set in motion by certain fateful acts. The Antelope Wife is a story of connections in which history, lust, contemporary urban Native American life, hand me down names, and legends, as well as sacred myth, combine.

Set in Minneapolis, originally an important trading center and hunting ground, and still a magnet for many native people from nearby reservations, the story goes back in time. It begins with a soldier, who deserts the cavalry during a cruel raid on an Ojibwa village to chase a dog bearing on its back a baby on a cradle board strung with breathtaking blue beads. Generations later, a fast talking trader kidnaps a silent and graceful woman from a powwow.

In a haunting re creation of a native tale, the woman is part antelope. Hunter and hunted change identities. The Antelope Wife changes people. Nothing is ever the same again for friends and family.

The intertwining themes of the story include tragic loss, confusions of passion, transformation, betrayals, revenge, a dog who is almost soup, and an obsession to re create a perfect German cake, remembered from a taste decades earlier a mix of vibrant cultures and ideas. The Antelope Wife extends the branches of the families who populate Louise Erdrich’s earlier, award winning novels, and once again, her unsentimental, unsparing writing and reading capture the Native American sense of despair, magic, and humor in an unforgettable audiobook.

The Master Butchers Singing Club

A powerful new novel of from one of America’s most important and entertaining writers In 1918, Fidelis walks home from the Great War to a Germany broken and defeated. He finds himself inexplicably drawn to the fiancee of his dead best friend and they marry but, knowing he cannot make his fortune here, Fidelis heads for America. When he leaves, ‘The inside pockets of his father’s suit held all he needed.’ He leaves behind his family of master butchers, but not the skills he has learned from them and in America his sausages gradually become legendary…
Moving to small town America, he is soon joined by his wife and son, opens a deli and life seems to be perfect. But there are always the locals to contend with and when they meet Delphine and Cyprian, two eccentric travelling circus performers, things begin to get interesting. There is the problem of the unresolved dead bodies discovered rotting in the baseme*nt of Delphine’s father’s house, for one. And then there is the rivalry over the local singing groups will Fidelis be able to prove his superiority? Spanning two continents, this epic look at post war immigrants’ America is Louise Erdrich at her engrossing best. Warm, human, funny, deeply sad Erdrich’s cast of oddball characters are infinitely loveable. The Master Butchers Singing Club will delight the legions of existing Erdrich fans but is also sure to amaze and entrance those coming to her work for the first time.

The Plague of Doves

A beautiful, compelling, utterly original new novel from one of the most important American writers of our time. Pluto, North Dakota, is a town on the verge of extinction. Its unsavory origins which lie in white greed contain the seeds of its demise. Here, everybody is connected by love or friendship, by blood, and, most importantly, by the burden of a shared history. Evelina Harp, a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, is growing up on the reservation. She is prone to falling hopelessly in love, most notably with her cousin, Corwin Peace, a misfit with a late discovered talent for music, and then with her teacher, Sister Maria Anita Buckendorf, a godzilla like nun whose frank acceptance of herself is irresistible. Mooshum, Evelina’s grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history; listening enraptured to his tales Evelina learns of a horrific crime that has marked both Ojibwe and whites, whose fates have been inextricably bound ever since. Nobody understands the weight of that crime better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a half breed from Pluto, who also suffers from pains in the love department; as a judge on the reservation, he keeps watch over its inhabitants and recounts their lives with compassion and rare insight. In distinct and winning voices, Evelina and Judge Coutts unravel the intertwining stories of their families, their friends, and their lovers, the descendents of both the perpetrators and victims of the historic crime. Louise Erdrich’s characteristically graceful prose and sense of the comic and the tragic sweep readers along to the surprising conclusion of this stunning novel, a portrait of the complex allegiances, passions, and drama of a haunting land and its all too human people.

Shadow Tag

‘Here is the most telling fact: you wish to possess me. Here is another fact: I loved you and let you think you could.’ When Irene America discovers that her husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safe deposit box. There she records the truth about her life and her marriage, while turning her Red Diary hidden where Gil will find it into a manipulative farce. Alternating between these two records, complemented by unflinching third person narration, Shadow Tag is an eerily gripping read. When the novel opens, Irene is resuming work on her doctoral thesis about George Catlin, the nineteenth century painter whose Native American subjects often regarded his portraits with suspicious wonder. Gil, who gained notoriety as an artist through his emotionally revealing portraits of his wife work that is adoring, sensual, and humiliating, even shocking realizes that his fear of losing Irene may force him to create the defining work of his career. Meanwhile, Irene and Gil fight to keep up appearances for their three children: fourteen year old genius Florian, who escapes his family’s unraveling with joints and a stolen bottle of wine; Riel, their only daughter, an eleven year old feverishly planning to preserve her family, no matter what disaster strikes; and sweet kindergartener Stoney, who was born, his parents come to realize, at the beginning of the end. As her home increasingly becomes a place of violence and secrets, and she drifts into alcoholism, Irene moves to end her marriage. But her attachment to Gil is filled with shadowy need and delicious ironies. In brilliantly controlled prose, Shadow Tag fearlessly explores the complex nature of love, the fluid boundaries of identity, and one family’s struggle for survival and redemption.

Grandmother’s Pigeon

What is a family to do after Grandmother hitches a ride on a passing porpoise and heads for Greenland especially after they find a just hatched nest of birds in her bedroom? The windows were shut, the door closed could the stuffed pigeon on Grandmother’s shelf have had anything to do with this? Full color.

The Range Eternal

In the thick of the Turtle Mountains, inside one family’s little cabin, stood The Range Eternal. The woodburning stove provided warmth and comfort, delicious soups, and hot potatoes to warm cold hands on frozen winter mornings. It provided a glowing screen for a young girl’s imagination, and protection from the howling ice monsters in the night. But most of all, it was the true heart of the home one the young girl never knew how much she would miss until it was gone. Louise Erdrich is the author of many acclaimed and best selling books, including The Birchbark House, a National Book Award Finalist. She is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwa and lives in Minneapolis. Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher, an award winning illustration team, have collaborated on many picture books, including My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss; Cat, You Better Come Home by Garrison Keillor; Horsefly by Alice Hoffman; and Robin’s Room by Margaret Wise Brown.

Route Two (With: Michael Dorris)

This book was a joint effort by a husband and wife who wrote marvelously together but their life as a couple ended in tragedy when Michael killed himself. Louise made original drawings for the book.

Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris

From BooklistErdrich and Dorris currently share great success as a literary couple with their unique collaborative relationship. The editors have selected 25 interviews for this volume of the Literary Conversations series; together, the interviewers reveal some of the sources of the magic found in the fiction of these two fascinating writers. A striking characteristic surfaces from the slew of similar questions being asked and responded to again and again in these pages. If Erdrich and Dorris have forged a distinctive partnership and it appears they have it is due in part to their fearless acceptance of an unprecedented level of creative participation in each other’s writing. Admirers should delight in fascinating glimpses of their work process and personal lives. Alice Joyce

The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year

Louise Erdrich’s first major work of nonfiction, The Blue Jay’s Dance, brilliantly and poignantly examines the joys and frustrations, the compromises and the insights, and the difficult struggles and profound emotional satisfactions the acclaimed author experienced in the course of one twelve month period from a winter pregnancy through a spring and summer of new motherhood to her return to writing in the fall. In exquisitely lyrical prose, Erdrich illuminates afresh the large and small events that every parent will recognize and appreciate.

Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country

For more than twenty years Louise Erdrich has dazzled readers with the intricately wrought, deeply poetic novels which have won her a place among today’s finest writers. Her nonfiction is equally eloquent, and this lovely memoir offers a vivid glimpse of the landscape, the people, and the long tradition of storytelling that give her work its magical, elemental force.

In a small boat like those her Native American ancestors have used for countless generations, she travels to Ojibwe home ground, the islands of Lake of the Woods in southern Ontario. Her only companions are her new baby and the baby’s father, an Ojibwe spiritual leader, on a pilgrimage to the sacred rock paintings their people have venerated for centuries as mystical ‘teaching and dream guides,’ and where even today Ojibwe leave offerings of tobacco in token of their power. With these paintings as backdrop, Erdrich summons to life the Ojibwe’s spirits and songs, their language and sorrows, and the tales that are in their blood, echoing through her own family’s very contemporary American lives and shaping her vision of the wider world. Thoughtful, moving, and wonderfully well observed, her meditation evokes ancient wisdom, modern ways, and the universal human concerns we all share.

‘This book is a treasure and a delight.’ Minneapolis Star Tribune

Jacklight

The poems of Louise Erdrich reflect what it is to be a woman, a Midwesterner and a native American. She presents that region and those people without sentimentality, and although drawing from a deep well she does not ignore the ordinary. Her novels include ‘Love Medicine’.

Baptism of Desire

A second book of poetry by Louise Erdich, author of the bestselling and award winning novels Love Medicine, The Beet Queen and Tracks.

Baptisim by blood, water, or desire is necessary for salvation in Roman Catholic tradition, and Baptism of Desire in the term used for the leap of trust by which a sincere believer can experience spiritual regeneration. Louise Erdrich’s poems are acts of redemption. Everywhere evident is Erdrich’s unique capacity for finding the perfect word, the fresh, yet absolutely right, metaphor that makes her wrk both profound and accessable.

Original Fire

In this important new collection, her first in fourteen years, award winning author Louise Erdrich has selected poems from her two previous books of poetry, Jacklight and Baptism of Desire, and added new poems to compose Original Fire. Profound and accessible, this collection anticipates and enlarges upon many of the themes, and even the characters, of Erdrich’s prose. A sequence of story poems called ‘The Potchikoo Stories’ recounts the life and afterlife of the questing trickster Potchikoo, echoing the wit and humanity of the inimitable, Nanapush, who appears in several of Erdrich’s novels, most recently The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. Similarly, the group of poems called ‘The Butcher’s Wife’ contains the germ of Erdrich’s most recent novel, The Master Butchers Singing Club.A powerful new poem, ‘The Seven Sleepers,’ forms the core of an entire section of the book and is about the passionate search for the divine in all its forms. The final section, ‘Original Fire,’ travels through birth, ordinary life, loss, and redemption. These poems reveal that poetry emerges from what we fear most, and that memory is endurance.

The Red Convertible

This unique volume brings together for the first time three decades of short stories by one of the most innovative and exciting writers of our day. A master of the genre, Louise Erdrich has selected these pieces thirty works that first appeared in magazines as well as six unpublished stories from among a much larger oeuvre. She has ordered them chronologically but also by theme and voice. Erdrich is a fearless and inventive writer. In her fictional world, the mystical can emerge from the everyday, the comic turn suddenly tragic, and violence and beauty inhabit a single emotional landscape. Each character in these stories is full of surprises, and the twists and leaps of Erdrich’s imagination are made all the more meaningful by the deeper truth of human feeling that underlies them. In ‘Saint Marie,’ the ardent longing that propels a fourteen year old Indian girl up the hill to the Sacred Heart Convent and into a life and death struggle with the diabolical Sister Leopolda fuels a story of breathtaking power and originality. ‘Knives’ tells of a homely butcher’s assistant, a devoted reader of love stories, who falls for a good looking predator, a traveling salesman, with devastating consequences for each of them. ‘Le Mooz’ evokes the stinging flames of passion in old age ‘Margaret had exhausted three husbands, and Nanapush had outlived his six wives’ with unexpected humor that turns suddenly bittersweet at the story’s close. A passion for music in ‘Naked Woman Playing Chopin’ proves more powerful than any experience of carnal or spiritual love; indeed, when Agnes DeWitt removes her clothing to enter the music of a particular composer, she sweeps all before her and transcends mortality and time itself. In The Red Convertible, readers can follow the evolution of narrative styles, the shifts and metamorphoses in Erdrich’s fiction, over the past thirty years. These stories, spellbinding in their boldness and beauty, are a stunning literary achievement.

The Best American Short Stories 1981

Short Stories by Ann Beattie, John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Louis D. Rubin, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Elizabeth Tallent, Hortense Calisher, Joyce Carol Oates, Elizabeth Hardwick, and many others.

The Best American Short Stories 1983

Short Stories by Ann Tyler, Bill Barich, John Updike, Carolyn Chute, Ursula K. Le Guin, Raymond Carver, and many others.

The Best American Short Stories 1986

Short Stories by Ann Beattie, Ethan Canin, Joy Williams, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, Alice Munro, Thomas McGuane, Lord Tweedsmuir, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, and many others.

The Best American Short Stories of the Eighties

The 1980s were one of the most fertile and controversial times for the Amer ican short story. Rich in craft and variety, this collection includes such c lassic and beloved stories as Peter Taylor’s ‘The Old Forest,’ Raymond Carve r’s ‘Cathedral,’ and other works by Joyce Carol Oates, Russell Banks, and a host of exciting, newer talents. Hardcover edition also available. Houghton Mifflin

The Best American Short Stories 1993

The preeminent annual collection of short fiction features the writing of John Updike, Alice Munro, Wendell Berry, Diane Johnson, Lorrie Moore, Stephen Dixon, and Mary Gaitskill.

The Best American Short Stories 1994

These twenty short stories boldly and insightfully explore the extremes of human emotions. In her story ‘Night Talkers,’ Edwidge Danticat reunites a young man and the elderly aunt who raised him in Haiti. Anthony Doerr brings readers a naturalist who discovers the surprising healing powers of a deadly cone snail. Louise Erdrich writes of an Ojibwa fiddler whose music brings him deep and mysterious joy. Here are diverse and intriguing characters a kidnapper, an immigrant nanny, an amputee blues musician who are as surprised as the reader is at what brings them happiness. In his introduction, Walter Mosley explores the definition of a good short story, and writes, ‘The writers represented in this collection have told stories that suggest much larger ideas. I found myself presented with the challenge of simple human love contrasted against structures as large as religion and death. The desire to be loved or to be seen, represented on a canvas so broad that it would take years to explain all the roots that bring us to the resolution.’ Each of these stories bravely evokes worlds brim*ming with desire and loss, humanity and possibility. Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind. Lending a fresh perspective to a perennial favorite, Walter Mosley has chosen unforgettable short stories by both renowned writers and exciting newcomers. The Best American Short Stories 2003 features poignant tales that explore the nuances of family life and love, birth and death. Here are stories that will, as Mosley writes in his introduction, ‘live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That’s because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs.’Dorothy AllisonEdwidge DanticatE. L. DoctorowLouise ErdrichAdam HaslettZZ PackerMona SimpsonMary Yukari Waters

The Best American Short Stories 1995

These twenty short stories boldly and insightfully explore the extremes of human emotions. In her story ‘Night Talkers,’ Edwidge Danticat reunites a young man and the elderly aunt who raised him in Haiti. Anthony Doerr brings readers a naturalist who discovers the surprising healing powers of a deadly cone snail. Louise Erdrich writes of an Ojibwa fiddler whose music brings him deep and mysterious joy. Here are diverse and intriguing characters a kidnapper, an immigrant nanny, an amputee blues musician who are as surprised as the reader is at what brings them happiness. In his introduction, Walter Mosley explores the definition of a good short story, and writes, ‘The writers represented in this collection have told stories that suggest much larger ideas. I found myself presented with the challenge of simple human love contrasted against structures as large as religion and death. The desire to be loved or to be seen, represented on a canvas so broad that it would take years to explain all the roots that bring us to the resolution.’ Each of these stories bravely evokes worlds brim*ming with desire and loss, humanity and possibility. Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind. Lending a fresh perspective to a perennial favorite, Walter Mosley has chosen unforgettable short stories by both renowned writers and exciting newcomers. The Best American Short Stories 2003 features poignant tales that explore the nuances of family life and love, birth and death. Here are stories that will, as Mosley writes in his introduction, ‘live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That’s because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs.’Dorothy AllisonEdwidge DanticatE. L. DoctorowLouise ErdrichAdam HaslettZZ PackerMona SimpsonMary Yukari Waters

The Best American Short Stories 1996

Each fall, The Best American Short Stories provides a fresh showcase for this rich and unpredictable genre. Selected from an unusually wide variety of publications, the choices for 1996 place stories from esteemed national magazines alongside those from some of the smallest and most innovative literary journals. Contributors include Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Gordon, Robert Olen Butler, Alice Adams, Lynn Sharon Schwartz, and an array of stunning new talent.

The Best American Short Stories 1997

The preeminent short fiction series since 1915, The Best American Short Stories is the only annual that offers the finest works chosen by a distinguished best selling guest editor. This year, E. Annie Proulx’s selection includes dazzling stories by Tobias Wolff, Donald Hall, Cynthia Ozick, Robert Stone, Junot D’az, and T. C. Boyle as well as an array of stunning new talent. In her introduction, Proulx writes that beyond their strength and vigor, these stories achieve ‘a certain intangible feel for the depth of human experience, not uncommonly expressed through a kind of dry humor.’ As ever, this year’s volume surprises and rewards.

The Best American Short Stories 1998

Edited by beloved storyteller Garrison Keillor, this year’s volume promises to be full of humor, surprises, and, as always, accomplished writing by new and familiar voices. The preeminent short fiction series since 1915, The Best American Short Stories is the only volume that annually offers the finest works chosen by a distinguished best selling author.

The Best American Short Stories 1999

‘What I look for most in a story,’ writes Amy Tan in her introduction to this year’s volume of The Best American Short Stories, ‘what I crave, what I found in these twenty one, is a distinctive voice that tells a story only that voice can tell.’ Tan found herself drawn to wonderfully original stories that satisfied her appetite for the magic and mystery she loved as a child, when she was addicted to fairy tales. In this vibrant collection, fantasy and truth coexist brilliantly in new works by writers such as Annie Proulx, Lorrie Moore, Nathan Englander, and Pam Houston. ‘The Sun, the Moon, the Stars,’ by Junot Diaz, features a young man trying to stave off heartbreak in a sacred cave in Santo Domingo. In ‘Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter,’ by Chitra Divakaruni, a mother moves from India to California to be closer to her son, only to sacrifice something crucial along the way. In Melissa Hardy’s haunting story ‘The Uncharted Heart,’ a geologist unearths a shocking secret in the wilds of northern Ontario. ‘Maybe I’m still that kid who wants to see things I’ve never seen before,’ writes Tan. ‘I like being startled by images I never could have conjured up myself.’ With twenty one tales, each a fabulously rich journey into a different world, The Best American Short Stories 1999 is sure to surprise and delight.

The Best American Short Stories 2000

Still the only anthology shaped each year by a different guest editor always a preeminent master of the form THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES is the essential yearbook of the American literary scene. Here are the most talked about short stories of the year alongside undiscovered gems. In his introduction, guest editor E. L. Doctorow writes, ‘Here is the felt life conferred by the gifted storyteller…
who always raises two voices into the lonely universe, the character’s and the writer’s own.’ Doctorow has chosen a compelling variety of voices to usher in the new millennium, attesting to the astonishing range of human experience our best writers evoke. /Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content When a great annual collection comes out, it’s hard to know the reason why. Was there a bumper crop of high quality stories, or was this year’s guest editor especially gifted at winnowing out the good ones? Either way, the 2000 edition of The Best American Short Stories is a standout in a series that can be uneven. Its editor, E.L. Doctorow, seems to have a fondness for the ‘what if?’ story, the kind of tale that posits an imagination prodding question and then attempts to answer it. Nathan Englander’s ‘The Gilgul of Park Avenue’ asks: What if a WASPy financial analyst, riding in a cab one day, discovers to his surprise that he is irrevocably Jewish? In ‘The Ordinary Son,’ Ron Carlson asks: What if you are the only average person in a family of certifiable geniuses? And Allan Gurganus’s ‘He’s at the Office’ asks: What if the quintessential postwar American working man were forced to retire? This last story is narrated by the man’s grown son, who at the story’s opening takes his dad for a walk. Though it’s the present day, the father is still dressed in his full 1950s businessman regalia, including camel hair overcoat and felt hat. The two walk by a teenager. ‘The boy smiled. ‘Way bad look on you, guy.”

My father, seeking interpretation, stared at me. I simply shook my head no. I could not explain Dad to himself in terms of tidal fashion trends. All I said was ‘I think he likes you.’

The exchange typifies the writing showcased in this anthology: in these stories, again and again, we find a breakdown of human communication that is sprightly, humorous, and devastatingly complete. A few more of the terrific stories featured herein: Amy Bloom’s ‘The Story,’ a goofy metafiction about a villainous divorcee; Geoffrey Becker’s ‘Black Elvis,’ which tells of, well, a black Elvis; and Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘The Third and Final Continent,’ a story of an Indian man who moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Like the collection itself, Lahiri’s story amas*ses a lovely, funny mood as it goes along. Claire Dederer

The Best American Short Stories of the Century

Since the series’ inception in 1915, the annual volumes of The Best American Short Stories have launched literary careers, showcased the most compelling stories of each year, and confirmed for all time the significance of the short story in our national literature. Now The Best American Short Stories of the Century brings together the best of the best fifty five extraordinary stories that represent a century’s worth of unsurpassed accomplishments in this quintessentially American literary genre. Here are the stories that have endured the test of time: masterworks by such writers as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Saroyan, Flannery O’Connor, John Cheever, Eudora Welty, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, Cynthia Ozick, and scores of others. These are the writers who have shaped and defined the landscape of the American short story, who have unflinchingly explored all aspects of the human condition, and whose works will continue to speak to us as we enter the next century. Their artistry is represented splendidly in these pages. THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES series has also always been known for making literary discoveries, and discovery proved to be an essential part of selecting the stories for this volume too. Collections from years past yielded a rich harvest of surprises, stories that may have been forgotten but still retain their relevance and luster. The result is a volume that not only gathers some of the most significant stories of our century between two covers but resurrects a handful of lost literary gems as well. Of all the great writers whose work has appeared in the series, only John Updike’s contributions have spanned five consecutive decades, from his first appearance, in 1959, to his most recent, in 1998. Updike worked with coeditor Katrina Kenison to choose stories from each decade that meet his own high standards of literary quality.

The Best American Short Stories 2001

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred and twenty outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind.A wonderfully diverse collection, this year’s BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES from Hollywood to Hong Kong, from the Jersey shore to Wales, considering the biggest issues: love, war, health, success. Edited by the critically acclaimed, best selling author Barbara Kingsolver, The Best American Short Stories 2001 includes selections by Rick Bass, Ha Jin, Alice Munro, John Updike, and others. Highlighting exciting new voices as well as established masters of the form, this year’s collection is a testament to the good health of contemporary short fiction in this country.

The Best American Short Stories 2002

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to the twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind.

This year’s Best American Short Stories features a rich mix of voices, from both intriguing new writers and established masters of the form like Michael Chabon, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Ford, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Arthur Miller. The 2002 collection includes stories about everything from illicit love affairs to family, the immigrant experience and badly behaved children stories varied in subject but unified in their power and humanity. In the words of this year’s guest editor, the best selling author Sue Miller, ‘The American short story today is healthy and strong…
These stories arrived in the nick of time…
to teach me once more what we read fiction for.’

The Best American Short Stories 2003

Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. For each volume, a series editor reads pieces from hundreds of periodicals, then selects between fifty and a hundred outstanding works. That selection is pared down to twenty or so very best pieces by a guest editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field. This unique system has helped make the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind. Lending a fresh perspective to a perennial favorite, Walter Mosley has chosen unforgettable short stories by both renowned writers and exciting newcomers. The Best American Short Stories 2003 features poignant tales that explore the nuances of family life and love, birth and death. Here are stories that will, as Mosley writes in his introduction, ‘live with the reader long after the words have been translated into ideas and dreams. That’s because a good short story crosses the borders of our nations and our prejudices and our beliefs.’Dorothy Allison Edwidge Danticat E. L. Doctorow Louise Erdrich Adam Haslett ZZ Packer Mona Simpson Mary Yukari Waters

The Best American Short Stories 2004

Story for story, readers can’t beat The Best American Short Stories series…
Each year it offers the opportunity to dive into the current trends and fresh voices that define the modern American short story’ Chicago Tribune. This year’s most beloved short fiction anthology is edited by the best selling novelist Sue Miller, author of While I Was Gone, and, most recently, The World Below. The volume includes stories by Edwidge Danticat, Jill McCorkle, E. L. Doctorow, Arthur Miller, and Akhil Sharma, among others. /Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content In her opening remarks to The Best American Short Stories 2002, guest editor Sue Miller notes the difficulty of reading fiction produced during 2001, the year of the September 11 terrorist attacks. She also remarks that by the time she had finalized her 20 selections, this act of reading had restored her faith both in fiction’s significance and its ability to tap into timeless themes. The 2002 anthology includes stories best described as realist fiction or traditional fiction, many set in contemporary times. The tales range from E.L. Doctorow’s ‘A House on the Plains,’ a murder set at the turn of the century, to pieces with more recent settings, like ‘Puppy’ by Richard Ford, which shows how a New Orleans couple deals or doesn’t deal with the appearance of a stray dog. Both Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Nobody’s Business’ and Edwidge Danticat’s ‘Seven’ deftly portray the disconnection a semi assimilated Indian American and Haitian American couple experience both as partners and as U.S. citizens. Leonard Michael’s ‘Nachman from Los Angeles,’ in contrast, adds some levity to the mix. Miller adds in her preface that maybe next year the tales will depart further from tradition, but judging from this volume no departure is necessary: the selections take the reader on a delightful journey through some of America’s best contemporary writers. Jane Hodges

The Best American Short Stories 2005

The Best American Series First, Best, and Best Selling

The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very 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 Short Stories 2005 includes

Dennis Lehane Tom Perrotta Alice Munro Edward P. Jones Joy Williams Joyce Carol Oates Thomas McGuane Kelly Link Charles D’Ambrosio Cory Doctorow George Saunders and others

Michael Chabon, guest editor, is the best selling author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, A Model World, and, most recently, The Final Solution. His novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.

The Best American Short Stories 2006

While a single short story may have a difficult time raising enough noise on its own to be heard over the din of civilization, short stories in bulk can have the effect of swarming bees, blocking out sound and sun and becoming the only thing you can think about, writes Ann Patchett in her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2006.

This vibrant, varied sampler of the American literary scene revels in life’s little absurdities, captures timely personal and cultural challenges, and ultimately shares subtle insight and compassion. In The View from Castle Rock, the short story master Alice Munro imagines a fictional account of her Scottish ancestors emigration to Canada in 1818. Nathan Englander s cast of young characters in How We Avenged the Blums confronts a bully dubbed The Anti Semite to both comic and tragic ends. In Refresh, Refresh, Benjamin Percy gives a forceful, heart wrenching look at a young man s choices when his father along with most of the men in his small town is deployed to Iraq. Yiyun Li s After a Life reveals secrets, hidden shame, and cultural change in modern China. And in Tatooizm, Kevin Moffett weaves a story full of humor and humanity about a young couple s relationship that has run its course.

Ann Patchett brought unprecedented enthusiasm and judiciousness to The Best American Short Stories 2006 , writes Katrina Kenison in her foreword, and she is, surely, every story writer s ideal reader, eager to love, slow to fault, exquisitely attentive to the text and all that lies beneath it.

The Best American Short Stories 2007

In his introduction to this volume, Stephen King writes, Talent does more than come out; it bursts out, again and again, doing exuberant cartwheels while the band plays ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’…
Talent can t help itself; it roars along in fair weather or foul, not sparing the fireworks. It gets emotional. It struts its stuff. In fact, that’s its job. Wonderfully eclectic, The Best American Short Stories 2007 collects stories by writers of undeniable talent, both newcomers and favorites. These stories examine the turning points in life when we, as children or parents, lovers or friends or colleagues, must break certain rules in order to remain true to ourselves. In T. C. Boyle s heartbreaking Balto, a thirteen year old girl provides devastating courtroom testimony in her father s trial. Aryn Kyle s charming story Allegiance shows a young girl caught between her despairing British mother and motherly American father. In The Bris, Eileen Pollack brilliantly writes of a son struggling to fulfill his filial obligations, even when they require a breach of morality and religion. Kate Walbert s stunning Do Something portrays one mother s impassioned and revolutionary refusal to accept her son s death. And in Richard Russo s graceful Horseman, an English professor comes to understand that plagiarism reveals more about a student than original work can. New series editor Heidi Pitlor writes, Stephen King s dedication, unflagging hard work, and enthusiasm for excellent writing shone through on nearly a daily basis this past year…
We agreed, disagreed, and in the end very much concurred on the merit of the twenty stories chosen. The result is a vibrant assortment of stories and voices brim*ming with attitude, deep wisdom, and rare compassion.

The Best Short Stories of 1921, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story

Edward Joseph Harrington O’Brien 1890 1941 was an American author, poet, editor and anthologist. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and attended Boston College and Harvard University. He was noted for compiling and editing an annual collection of The Best Short Stories by American authors at the beginning of the twentieth century, and also a series of The Best Short Stories by British authors. They proved to be highly influential and popular. He was also a noted author, his works including White Fountains 1917 and The Forgotten Threshold 1918.

The Best American Short Stories 2008

This brilliant collection, edited by the award winning and perennially provocative Salman Rushdie, boasts a magnificent array Library Journal of voices both new and recognized. With Rushdie at the helm, the 2008 edition reflects the variety of substance and style and the consistent quality that readers have come to expect Publishers Weekly. We all live in and with and by stories, every day, whoever and wherever we are. The freedom to tell each other the stories of ourselves, to retell the stories of our culture and beliefs, is profoundly connected to the larger subject of freedom itself. Salman Rushdie, editorThe Best American Short Stories 2008 includes KEVIN BROCKMEIER ALLEGRA GOODMAN A. M. HOMES NICOLE KRAUSS JONATHAN LETHEM STEVEN MILLHAUSER DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN ALICE MUNRO GEORGE SAUNDERS TOBIAS WOLFF and others

The Best American Short Stories 2009

Edited by critically acclaimed, best selling author Alice Sebold, the stories in this year’s collection serve as a provacative literary ‘antenna for what is going on in the world’ Chicago Tribune. The collection boasts great variety from ‘famous to first timers, sifted from major magazines and little reviews, grand and little worlds’ St. Louis Post Dispatch, ensuring yet another rewarding, eduring edition of the oldest and best selling Best American.

The Best American Short Stories 2010

Edited by the award winning, best selling author Richard Russo, this year’s collection boasts a satisfying chorus of twenty stories that are by turns playful, ironic, somber, and meditative Wall Street Journal. With the masterful Russo picking the best of the best, America s oldest and best selling story anthology is sure to be of enduring quality Chicago Tribune this year.

The Best American Short Stories 2011

With a New AfterwordAs a prizewinning foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Geraldine Brooks spent six years covering the Middle East through wars, insurrections, and the volcanic upheaval of resurgent fundamentalism. Yet for her, headline events were only the backdrop to a less obvious but more enduring drama: the daily life of Muslim women. Nine Parts of Desire is the story of Brooks’ intrepid journey toward an understanding of the women behind the veils, and of the often contradictory political, religious, and cultural forces that shape their lives. Defying our stereotypes about the Muslim world, Brooks’ acute analysis of the world’s fastest growing religion deftly illustrates how Islam’s holiest texts have been misused to justify repression of women, and how male pride and power have warped the original message of a once liberating faith.

Related Authors

Leave a Comment