Flannery O’Connor Books In Order

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Wise Blood (1952)
  2. The Violent Bear It Away (1960)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. The Artificial Nig*ger (1955)
  2. A Good Man Is Hard To Find (1955)
  3. Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965)
  4. Mystery and Manners (1969)
  5. The Complete Stories (1971)
  6. Flannery O’Connor (2003)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. The Habit of Being (1978)
  2. Presence of Grace and Other Book Reviews (1983)

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. 50 Great Short Stories (1952)
  2. Witches’ Brew (1984)
  3. The Oxford Book of American Short Stories (1992)

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Best American Short Stories Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Flannery O’Connor Books Overview

Wise Blood

Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor’s astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith. He falls under the spell of a ‘blind’ street preacher names Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Lily Sabbath. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel Motes founds the The Church Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with ‘Wise Blood,’ who leads him to a mummified holy child, and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Hazel’s existential struggles. This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most consuming characters in modern fiction.

The Violent Bear It Away

First published in 1955, The Violent Bear It Away is now a landmark in American literature. It is a dark and absorbing example of the Gothic sensibility and bracing satirical voice that are united in Flannery O’Conner’s work. In it, the orphaned Francis Marion Tarwater and his cousins, the schoolteacher Rayber, defy the prophecy of their dead uncle–that Tarwater will become a prophet and will baptize Rayber’s young son, Bishop. A series of struggles ensues: Tarwater fights an internal battle against his innate faith and the voices calling him to be a prophet while Rayber tries to draw Tarwater into a more ‘reasonable’ modern world. Both wrestle with the legacy of their dead relatives and lay claim to Bishop’s soul.

O’Connor observes all this with an astonishing combination of irony and compassion, humor and pathos. The result is a novel whose range and depth reveal a brilliant and innovative writers acutely alert to where the sacred lives and to where it does not.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

A Good Man Is Hard To Find‘ is Flannery O’Connor’s most famous and most discussed story. O’Connor herself singled it out by making it the title piece of her first collection and the story she most often chose for readings or talks to students. It is an unforgettable tale, both riveting and comic, of the confrontation of a family with violence and sudden death. More than anything else O’Connor ever wrote, this story mixes the comedy, violence, and religious concerns that characterize her fiction. This casebook for the story includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of the author’s life, the authoritative text of the story itself, comments and letters by O’Connor about the story, critical essays, and a bibliography. The critical essays span more than twenty years of commentary and suggest several approaches to the story formalistic thematic, deconstructionist all within the grasp of the undergraduate, while the introduction also points interested students toward still other resources. Useful for both beginning and advanced students, this casebook provides an in depth introduction to one of America’s most gifted modern writers. The contributors are Michael O. Bellamy, Hallman B. Bryant, William S. Doxey, J. Peter Dyson, Madison Jones, W.S. Marks, III, Carter Martin, William J. Scheick, Mary Jane Schenck, and J.O. Tate. Frederick Asals teaches at New College, the University of Toronto. He is the author of Flannery O’Connor: The Imagination of Extremity and of articles on O’Connor and other American writers. A volume in a new series, Women Writers: Text and Contexts, edited by Thomas L. Erskine and Connie L. Richards. Series Board: Martha Banta, Barbara Christian, and Paul Lauter.

Everything That Rises Must Converge

This collection of nine short stories by Flannery O’Connor was published posthumously in 1965. The flawed characters of each story are fully revealed in apocalyptic moments of conflict and violence that are presented with comic detachment. The title story is a tragicomedy about social pride, racial bigotry, generational conflict, false liberalism, and filial dependence. The protagonist, Julian Chestny, is hypocritically disdainful of his mother’s prejudices, but his smug selfishness is replaced with childish fear when she suffers a fatal stroke after being struck by a black woman she has insulted out of oblivious ignorance rather than malice. Similarly, ”The Comforts of Home” is about an intellectual son with an Oedipus complex. Driven by the voice of his dead father, the son accidentally kills his sentimental mother in an attempt to murder a harlot. The other stories are ”A View of the Woods,” ”Parker’s Back,” ”The Enduring Chill,” ”Greenleaf,” ”The Lame Shall Enter First,” ”Revelation,” and ”Judgment Day.” Flannery O’Connor was working on Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith, and morality. The stories encompass the comic and the tragic, the beautiful and the grotesque; each carries her highly individual stamp and could have been written by no one else.

Mystery and Manners

At her death in 1964, O’Connor left behind a body of unpublished essays and lectures as well as a number of critical articles that had appeared in scattered publications during her too short lifetime. The keen writings comprising Mystery and Manners, selected and edited by O’Connor’s lifelong friends Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, are characterized by the directness and simplicity of the author’s style, a fine tuned wit, understated perspicacity, and profound faith. The book opens with ‘The King of the Birds,’ her famous account of raising peacocks at her home in Milledgeville, Georgia. Also included are: three essays on regional writing, including ‘The Fiction Writer and His Country’ and ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction’; two pieces on teaching literature, including ‘Total Effect and the 8th Grade’; and four articles concerning the writer and religion, including ‘The Catholic Novel in the Protestant South.’ Essays such as ‘The Nature and Aim of Fiction’ and ‘Writing Short Stories’ are widely seen as gems. This bold and brilliant essay collection is a must for all readers, writers, and students of contemporary American literature.

The Complete Stories

Winner of the National Book Award

The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O’Connor’s monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O’Connor put together in her short lifetime Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

O’Connor published her first story, ‘The Geranium,’ in 1946, while she was working on her master’s degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, ‘Judgement Day’ sent to her publisher shortly before her death is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of ‘The Geranium.’ Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O’Connor’s longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.

Flannery O’Connor

Despite her early death from lupus at 39, Flannery O’Connor has left a remarkable literary legacy. Written for high school students and undergraduates, this biography is a concise, accessible overview of O’Connor’s life and achievements. Included are chapters on her youth and early literary career, the decline of her health and her return to her hometown, her maturation as an author, her identity as a Southern writer, and her final years. The volume also provides a timeline and closes with a bibliography of books, articles, and electronic sources for student research. Despite her early death from lupus at 39, Flannery O’Connor has left a remarkable literary legacy. She emerged as one of America’s most controversial, misunderstood, and promising young writers. Though she published only two novels, a collection of short stories, and various other prose works, she forcefully conveyed her Catholicism to a wide audience. She frequently created grotesque Southern characters, depicted violent situations, and wrote with acerbic wit. This biography discusses her fascinating life and literary career. Written especially for high school students and undergraduates, this volume is a concise and accessible guide to O’Connor’s achievements. Included are chapters on her youth and early works, the decline of her health and her return to her hometown, her maturation as an author, her identity as a Southern writer, and her final years. The volume also presents a timeline and bibliography of books, articles, and electronic sources for student research.

The Habit of Being

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Special Award’I have come to think that the true likeness of Flannery O’Connor will be painted by herself, a self portrait in words, to be found in her letters…
There she stands, a phoenix risen from her own words: calm, slow, funny, courteous, both modest and very sure of herself, intense, sharply penetrating, devout but never pietistic, downright, occasionally fierce, and honest in a way that restores honor to the word.’ Sally Fitzgerald, from the Introduction

Presence of Grace and Other Book Reviews

During the 1950s and early 1960s Flannery O’Connor wrote more than a hundred book reviews for two Catholic diocesan newspapers in Georgia. This full collection of these reviews nearly doubles the number that have appeared in print elsewhere and represents a significant body of primary materials from the O’Connor canon. We find in the reviews the same personality so vividly apparent in her fiction and her lectures the unique voice of the artist that is one clear sign of genius. Her spare precision, her humor, her extraordinary ability to permit readers to see deeply into complex and obscure truths all are present in these reviews and letters.

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.

50 Great Short Stories

50 Great Short Stories is a comprehensive selection from the world’s finest short fiction. The authors represented range from Hawthorne, Maupassant, and Poe, through Henry James, Conrad, Aldous Huxley, and James Joyce, to Hemingway, Katherine Anne Porter, Faulkner, E.B. White, Saroyan, and O Connor. The variety in style and subject is enormous, but all these stories have one point in common the enduring quality of the writing, which places them among the masterpieces of the world s fiction.

The Oxford Book of American Short Stories

‘How ironic,’ Joyce Carol Oates writes in her introduction to this marvelous collection, ‘that in our age of rapid mass-production and the easy proliferation of consumer products, the richness and diversity of the American literary imagination should be so misrepresented in most anthologies.’ Why, she asks, when writers such as Samuel Clemens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Saul Bellow, and John Updike have among them written hundreds of short stories, do anthologists settle on the same two or three titles by each author again and again? ‘Isn’t the implicit promise of an anthology that it will, or aspires to, present something different, unexpected?’

In The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Joyce Carol Oates offers a sweeping survey of American short fiction, in a collection of fifty-six tales that combines classic works with many ‘different, unexpected’ gems, and that invites readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Some selections simply can’t be improved on, Oates admits, and she happily includes such time-honored works as Irving’s ‘Rip Van Winkle,’ Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ and Hemingway’s ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.’ But alongside these classics, Oates introduces such little-known stories as Mark Twain’s ‘Cannibalism in the Cars,’ a story that reveals a darker side to his humor ‘That morning we had Morgan of Alabama for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I ever sat down to…
a perfect gentleman, and singularly juicy’. From Melville come the juxtaposed tales ‘The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids,’ of which Oates says, ‘Only Melville could have fashioned out of ‘real’ events…
such harrowing and dreamlike allegorical fiction.’ From Flannery O’Connor we find ‘A Late Encounter With the Enemy,’ and from John Cheever, ‘The Death of Justina,’ one of Cheever’s own favorites, though rarely anthologized. The reader will also delight in the range of authors found here, from Charles W. Chesnutt, Jean Toomer, and Sarah Orne Jewett, to William Carlos Williams, Kate Chopin, and Zora Neale Hurston. Contemporary artists abound, including Bharati Mukherjee and Amy Tan, Alice Adams and David Leavitt, Bobbie Ann Mason and Tim O’Brien, Louise Erdrich and John Edgar Wideman. Oates provides fascinating introductions to each writer, blending biographical information with her own trenchant observations about their work, plus a long introductory essay, in which she offers the fruit of years of reflection on a genre in which she herself is a master.

This then is a book of surprises, a fascinating portrait of American short fiction, as filtered through the sensibility of a major modern writer.

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