Jonathan Lethem Books In Order

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Gun, With Occasional Music (1994)
  2. Amnesia Moon (1995)
  3. As She Climbed Across the Table (1997)
  4. Girl in Landscape (1998)
  5. Motherless Brooklyn (1999)
  6. Ninety Percent of Everything (2001)
  7. This Shape We’re In (2001)
  8. The Fortress of Solitude (2003)
  9. You Don’t Love Me Yet (2007)
  10. Chronic City (2009)
  11. Dissident Gardens (2013)
  12. A Gambler’s Anatomy / The Blot (2016)
  13. The Feral Detective (2018)
  14. The Arrest (2020)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. The Vision (2014)
  2. The Blot: A Supplement (2017)

Graphic Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Omega (2008)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002 (2002)
  2. The Disappointment Artist (2005)
  3. They Live (2010)
  4. Conversations with Jonathan Lethem (2011)
  5. The Ecstasy of Influence (2011)
  6. Talking Heads’ Fear of Music (2011)
  7. More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers (2017)

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)

The Year’s Best Science Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (1986)
  2. The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Eleventh Annual Collection (1994)
  3. The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection (1997)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection (1997)
  2. The Best American Essays 2005 (2005)
  3. Crucified Dreams (2011)
  4. Super Stories of Heroes and Villains (2013)
  5. The Best American Mystery Stories 2019 (2019)
  6. The Writer’s Library (2020)

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers

Graphic Standalone Novels Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Best American Short Stories Book Covers

The Year’s Best Science Fiction Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Jonathan Lethem Books Overview

Gun, With Occasional Music

Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems there’s a rabbit in his waiting room and a trigger happy kangaroo on his tail. Near future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage. Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he’s falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor’s Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse. Mixing elements of sci fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from the author of Motherless Brooklyn is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold.

Amnesia Moon

In Jonathan Lethem’s wryly funny second novel, we meet a young man named Chaos, who’s living in a movie theater in post apocalyptic Wyoming, drinking alcohol, and eating food out of cans. It’s an unusual and at times unbearable existence, but Chaos soon discovers that his post nuclear reality may have no connection to the truth. So he takes to the road with a girl named Melinda in order to find answers. As the pair travels through the United States they find that, while each town has been affected differently by the mysterious source of the apocalypse, none of the people they meet can fill in their incomplete memories or answer their questions. Gradually, figures from Chaos’s past, including some who appear only under the influence of intravenously administered drugs, make Chaos remember some of his forgotten life as a man named Moon.

As She Climbed Across the Table

The best boy meets girl meets void story ever written. Professor Philip Engstrom is in love with Alice Coombs, a particle physicist who, unfortunately has fallen in love with Lack, an artificially created nothingness, a rift in the universe that absorbs some things and disdains others. For this reason, Alice finds Lack an irresistibly mysterious personality something that makes it an unbeatable rival for Philip Internet publicity .

Girl in Landscape

Anyone who wonders why Jonathan Lethem is the only novelist to be included among Newsweek’s ‘100 People for the New Century’ need only read his deliriously original new book, a science fiction/Western that combines the tragic momentum of The Searchers with the sexual tension of Lolita. At the age of 13, Pella Marsh emigrates with her family to the Planet of the Archbuilders. These enigmatic aborigines have names like Lonely Dumptruck and and Hiding Kneel and a civilization that baffles and frightens their human visitors. As the spikily independent Pella becomes an uneasy envoy between two species, Girl in Landscape deftly interweaves themes of exploration and otherness, loss and sexual awakening.

Motherless Brooklyn

‘Tell your story walking.’ St. Vincent’s Home for Boys, Brooklyn, early 1970s. For Lionel Essrog, a.k.a. The Human Freakshow, a victim of Tourette’s syndrome an uncontrollable urge to shout out nonsense, touch every surface in reach, rearrange objects, Frank Minna is a savior. A local tough guy and fixer, Minna shows up to take Lionel and three of his fellow orphans on mysterious errands: they empty a store of stereos as the owner watches; destroy a small amuseme*nt park; visit old Italian men. The four grow up to be the Minna Men, a fly by night detective agency limo service, and their days and nights revolve around Frank, the prince of Brooklyn, who glides through life on street smarts, attitude, and secret knowledge. Then one dreadful night, Frank is knifed and thrown into a Dumpster, and Lionel must become a real detective. As Lionel struggles to find Frank’s killer without letting his Tourette’s get in the way he’s forced to delve into the complex, shadowy web of relationships, threats, and favors that make up the Brooklyn world he thought he knew so well. No one not Frank, not Frank’s bitter wife, Julia, not the other Minna Men is who they seem. Not even The Human Freakshow. All of the Lethem touches that have thrilled critics are here crackling dialogue, sly humor, dizzying plot twists but they’re secondary to wonderfully full, tragic, funny characterizations, and a dazzling evocation of place. Indeed, Brooklyn with its charming folkways and language, its unique style of bad guy swagger and sentimentality becomes itself a major character. Motherless Brooklyn is a bravura performance: funny, tense, touching, extravagant. This novel signals the coming of age of a major American writer.

This Shape We’re In

Lethem, author of the bestselling Motherless Brooklyn , returns in concentrated form packing twice the adventure into one eighth the pages. This book could be some kind of allegory book, but it might not be an allegory book at all. It involves people and drinking and people looking for a giant eye. It is among the best things Mr. Lethem has written.

The Fortress of Solitude

This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbors, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighborhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as ‘gentrification.’This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the most simple human decisions what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is the story of 1990s America, when no one cared anymore. This is the story of punk, that easy white rebellion, and crack, that monstrous plague. This is the story of the loneliness of the avant garde artist and the exuberance of the graffiti artist. This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: They would screw up their lives. This is the story of joyous afternoons of stickball and dreaded years of schoolyard extortion. This is the story of belonging to a society that doesn’t accept you. This is the story of prison and of college, of Brooklyn and Berkeley, of soul and rap, of murder and redemption. This is the story Jonathan Lethem was born to tell. This is The Fortress of Solitude.

You Don’t Love Me Yet

From the incomparable Jonathan Lethem, a raucous romantic farce that explores the paradoxes of love and art Lucinda Hoekke spends eight hours a day at the Complaint Line, listening to anonymous callers air their random grievances. Most of the time, the work is excruciatingly tedious. But one frequent caller, who insists on speaking only to Lucinda, captivates her with his off color ruminations and opaque self reflections. In blatant defiance of the rules, Lucinda and the Complainer arrange a face to face meeting and fall desperately in love. Consumed by passion, Lucinda manages only to tear herself away from the Complainer to practice with the alternative band in which she plays bass. The lead singer of the band is Matthew, a confused young man who works at the zoo and has kidnapped a kangaroo to save it from ennui. Denise, the drummer, works at No Shame, a masturbation boutique. The band’s talented lyricist, Bedwin, conflicted about the group s as yet nonexistent fame, is suffering from writer s block. Hoping to recharge the band s creative energy, Lucinda suggests some of the Complainer s philosophical musings to Bedwin. When Bedwin transforms them into brilliant songs, the band gets its big break, including an invitation to appear on L.A. s premiere alternative radio show. The only problem is the Complainer. He insists on joining the band, with disastrous consequences for all. Brim*ming with satire and sex, You Don t Love Me Yet is a funny and affectionate send up of the alternative band scene, the city of Los Angeles, and the entire genre of romantic comedy, but remains unmistakably the work of the inimitable Jonathan Lethem.

Chronic City

The acclaimed author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude returns with a roar with this gorgeous, searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires, and lies. Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan’s social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called Martyr & Pesty. Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fianc e, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters. Like Janice, Chase is adrift, she in Earth’s stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties. Into Chase’s cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall eyed free range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high grade mari*juana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus’s countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life shattering urgency. Along with Oona Laszlo, a self loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor, Chase and Perkus attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artifacts on an island where everything can be bought: Truth. Like Manhattan itself, Jonathan Lethem’s masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand in for the whole world and a place utterly unique. From the Hardcover edition.

Omega

This is the story of a mute, reluctant super hero from another planet, and the earthly teenager with whom he shares a strange destiny and the legion of robots and nanoviruses that have been sent from afar to hunt the two of them down! Created in 1975 by Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes, the original Omega the Unknown lasted only ten issues, but was a legend to those who recall it an ahead of its time tale of an anti hero, inflected with brilliant ambiguity. One of Omega‘s teenage fans was award winning novelist Jonathan Lethem, who has used the original as a springboard for a superbly strange, funny, and moving graphic novel in ten chapters. Collects Omega: The Unknown 1 10.

Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002

Announcing the third annual collection of the year’s best essays and articles on music. It’s ‘music geek rapture.’ Entertainment Weekly It’s here: the third and latest volume in the series that you have come to rely upon for your music reading fix. The 2002 volume will celebrate the year’s best writing about music and its culture, as selected by Jonathan Lethem, best selling novelist, music hound, and self confessed closet rock writer. With pieces on a dazzling array of topics from more than a hundred sources, the collection brings you remarkable essays by journalists and authors who are as serious about writing as they are about music. It’s required reading for anyone who loves either art. Past contributors have included: David Rakoff Mike Doughty Lorraine Ali Greil Marcus Richard Meltzer Robert Gordon Sarah Vowell Nick Tosches Anthony DeCurtis William Gay Whitney Balliett Lester Bangs Rosanne Cash Susan Orlean Eddie Dean Selwyn Seyfu Hinds Alec Wilkinson David Hajdu

The Disappointment Artist

In a volume he describes as a series of covert and no so covert autobiographical pieces, Jonathan Lethem explores the nature of cultural obsession in his case, with examples as diverse as western films, comic books, the music of Talking Heads and Pink Floyd, and the New York City subway. Along the way, he shows how each of these voyages out from himself have led him home home to his father’s life as a painter, and to the source of his beginnings as a writer. The Disappointment Artist is a series of windows onto the collisions of art, landscape, and personal history that formed Lethem’s richly imaginative, searingly honest perspective on life as a human creature in the jungle of culture at the end of the twentieth century. From a confession of the sadness of a Star Wars nerd to an investigation into the legacy of a would be literary titan, Lethem illuminates the process by which a child invents himself as a writer, and as a human being, through a series of approaches to the culture around him. In The Disappointment Artist, a letter from his aunt, a children s book author, spurs a meditation on the value of writing workshops, and the uncomfortable fraternity of writers. In Defending The Searchers Lethem explains how a passion for the classic John Wayne Western became occasion for a series of minor humiliations. In Identifying with Your Parents, an excavation of childhood love for superhero comics expands to cover a whole range of nostalgia for a previous generation s cultural artifacts. And 13/1977/21, which begins by recounting the summer he saw Star Wars twenty one times, slipping past ushers who d begun to recognize me…
occult as a po*rn customer, becomes a meditation on the sorrow and solace of the solitary movie goer. The Disappointment Artist confirms Lethem’s unique ability to illuminate the way life, his and ours, can be read between the lines of art and culture.

They Live

Deep Focus is a series of film books with a fresh approach. Take the smartest, liveliest writers in contemporary letters and let them loose on the most vital and popular corners of cinema history: midnight movies, the New Hollywood of the sixties and seventies, film noir, screwball comedies, international cult classics, and more. Passionate and idiosyncratic, each volume of Deep Focus is long form criticism that’s relentlessly provocative and entertaining. Kicking off the series is Jonathan Lethem s take on They Live, John Carpenter s 1988 classic amalgam of deliberate B movie, sci fi, horror, anti Yuppie agitprop. Lethem exfoliates Carpenter s paranoid satire in a series of penetrating, free associational forays into the context of a story that peels the human masks off the ghoulish overlords of capitalism. His field of reference spans classic Hollywood cinema and science fiction, as well as popular music and contemporary art and theory. Taking into consideration the work of Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, James Brown, Fredric Jameson, Shepard Fairey, Philip K. Dick, Alfred Hitchcock, and Edgar Allan Poe, not to mention the role of wrestlers including They Live star Rowdy Roddy Piper in contemporary culture, Lethem s They Live provides a wholly original perspective on Carpenter s subversive classic.

The Ecstasy of Influence

What’s a novelist supposed to do with contemporary culture? And what s contemporary culture sup posed to do with novelists? In The Ecstasy of Influence, Jonathan Lethem, tangling with what he calls the white elephant role of the writer as public intellectual, arrives at an astonishing range of answers. A constellation of previously published pieces and new essays as provocative and idiosyncratic as any he s written, this volume sheds light on an array of topics from sex in cinema to drugs, graffiti, Bob Dylan, cyberculture, 9/11, book touring, and Marlon Brando, as well as on a shelf s worth of his literary models and contemporaries: Norman Mailer, Paula Fox, Bret Easton Ellis, James Wood, and oth ers. And, writing about Brooklyn, his father, and his sojourn through two decades of writing, Lethem sheds an equally strong light on himself.

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.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

Third in series, winner of the 1987 Locus Poll Award, Best Anthology. Contents include Introduction: Summation: 1985, essay by Gardner Dozois; The Jaguar Hunter, by Lucius Shepard nominated, 1985 Nebula Award, 1985 World Fantasy Award; Dogfight, by Michael Swanwick and William Gibson nominated, 1985 Nebula Award, 1986 Hugo Award; Fermi and Frost, by Frederik Pohl winner, 1986 Hugo Award; Green Days in Brunei, by Bruce Sterling nominated, 1985 Nebula Award; Snow, by John Crowley nominated, 1985 Nebula Award, 1986 Hugo Award; The Fringe, by Orson Scott Card nominated, 1985 Nebula Award, 1986 Hugo Award; The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things, by Karen Joy Fowler; Sailing to Byzantium, by Robert Silverberg winner, 1985 Nebula Award; nominated, 1986 Hugo Award; Solstice, by James Patrick Kelly; Duke Pasquale’s Ring, novella by Avram Davidson; More Than the Sum of His Parts, by Joe Haldeman nominated, 1985 Nebula Award; Out of All Them Bright Stars, by Nancy Kress Winner, 1985 Nebula Award; Side Effects, by Walter Jon Williams; The Only Neat Thing to Do, by James Tiptree, Jr. nominated, 1985 Nebula Award, 1986 Hugo Award; winner, 1986 Locus Poll Award; Dinner in Audoghast, by Bruce Sterling nominated, 1986 Hugo Award; Under Siege, by George R. R. Martin 1986 Locus Poll Award, 6th Place; Flying Saucer Rock & Roll, by Howard Waldrop nominated, 1985 Nebula Award, 1986 Hugo Award; A Spanish Lesson, by Lucius Shepard Locus Poll Award, 11th Place; Roadside Rescue, by Pat Cadigan; Paper Dragons, by James P. Blaylock winner, 1986 World Fantasy Award; nominated, 1985 Nebula Award; Magazine Section, by R. A. Lafferty; The War at Home, by Lewis Shiner 1986 Locus Poll Award, 21st Place; Rockabye Baby, by S. C. Sykes nominated, 1985 Nebula Award; Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson nominated, 1985 Nebula Award, 1986 Hugo Award.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

Join twenty eight of today’s finest writers for a host of imaginative tours through worlds as fabulous as the farthest galaxy and as strange as life on earth can be. Among the talented story tellers in this volume are: Stephen Baxter, James P. Blaylock, Tony Daniel, Gregory Feeley, Gwyneth Jones, Jonathan Lethem, Robert Reed, Michael Sanwick, Cherry Wilder, Walter Jon Williams, Gene Wolfe, Steven Utley, and many more of tomorrow’s leading imaginations. Gardener Dozois’s summary of the year in science fiction and a long list of honorable mentions round out this volume, making it the one book for anyone who’s interested in SF today.

The Best American Essays 2005

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 Essays 2005 includesRoger Angell Andrea Barrett Jonathan Franzen Ian Frazier Edward Hoagland Ted Kooser Jonathan Lethem Danielle Ofri Oliver Sacks Cathleen Schine David Sedaris Robert Stone David Foster Wallace and othersSusan Orlean, guest editor, is the author of My Kind of Place, The Orchid Thief, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, and Saturday Night. A staff writer for The New Yorker since 1982, she has also written for Outside, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Vogue.

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