The Best American Short Stories - by Heidi Pitlor (Paperback)

About the Book

Award-winning and best-selling author T.C. Boyle guest edits this year's The Best American Short Stories, the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction.

Book Synopsis

In his introduction to this one hundredth volume of the beloved Best American Short Stories, guest editor T. C. Boyle writes, "The Model T gave way to the Model A and to the Ferrari and the Prius . . . modernism to postmodernism and post-postmodernism. We advance. We progress. We move on. But we are part of a tradition."

Boyle's choices of stories reflect a vibrant range of characters, from a numb wife who feels alive only in the presence of violence to a new widower coming to terms with his sudden freedom, from a missing child to a champion speedboat racer. These stories will grab hold and surprise, which according to Boyle is "what the best fiction offers, and there was no shortage of such in this year's selections."

Mulling over the question of character likability, series editor Heidi Pitlor asks, "Did I like these characters? I very much liked reading their stories, as did T. C. Boyle." Here are characters who "are living, breathing people who screw up terribly and want and need and think uneasy thoughts."

T. C. BOYLE, guest editor, has published fifteen novels and ten collections of short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988 for his novel World's End and the Prix Médicis étranger for The Tortilla Curtain in 1995, as well as the 2014 Henry David Thoreau Prize for excellence in nature writing. His most recent book is the novel The Harder They Come.

HEIDI PITLOR, series editor, is a former senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She is the author of the novels The Birthdays and The Daylight Marriage.

From the Back Cover

The Best American Series(r)

MEGAN MAYHEW BERGMAN
JUSTIN BIGOS
KEVIN CANTY
DIANE COOK
JULIA ELLIOTT
LOUISE ERDRICH
BEN FOWLKES
ARNA BONTEMPS HEMENWAY
DENIS JOHNSON
SARAH KOKERNOT
VICTOR LODATO
COLUM MCCANN
ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN
THOMAS MCGUANE
MAILE MELOY
SHOBHA RAO
JOAN SILBER
ARIA BETH SLOSS
LAURA LEE SMITH
JESS WALTER
"

Review Quotes

"Confrontational and at times confounding, these are stories to get lost in, then gratefully chart a path homeward." --Kirkus Reviews --

About the Author

T. C. BOYLE is the author of fourteen novels, including Drop City, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and World's End, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has also written nine short story collections.

HEIDI PITLOR is the author of The Birthdays and the forthcoming novel The Daylight Marriage.