Best American Fiction Anthologies

Keenly observed and written with his insightful and deadpan sense of humor, he explores enduring Southern truths about home, place, spirit, table, and the regions' varied geographies, including his native Alabama, Cajun country, and the Gulf Coast. -- New Orleans Times-Picayune , praise for the author. -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution , praise for the author --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Scalia Speaks will give readers the opportunity to encounter the legendary man more fully, helping them better understand the jurisprudence that made him one of the most important justices in the Court's history and introducing them to his broader insights on faith and life. "Reading Scalia Speaks — the marvelous collection of his speeches, lovingly compiled by his son and a former law clerk — brought Nino back to life for me." But I would go further and say that it should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the mind of a great American, a figure so important to our history that his passing influenced the presidential election held months later. “An almost intimate picture of one of the giants of our age…Scalia’s mind sparkled like a gem, but perhaps, in our turbulent time, the most important takeaway from this collection is the lesson it teaches about civility.”. -Mona Charen. “An extraordinary portrait of a great public figure and thinker.

In Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems fans may indulge in all of Poe's most imaginative short-stories, including The Fall of the House of Usher, The Murders in Rue Morgue, The Tell-Tale Heart, Ligeia and Ms. Poe's life was not far removed from the drama of his fiction.

The entire book, with its unconventional page arrangement and eclectic, frenetic mix of text and pictures, is a spoof on the art of book design and the art of the fairy tale. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales retells--and wreaks havoc on--the allegories we all thought we knew by heart.

Since its original publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind —winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the bestselling novels of all time—has been heralded by readers everywhere as The Great American Novel. “Pushing the bounds of the Richter Scale, the nine stories in Last Day on Earth are going to shake up the story world."

In his passionate, luminous novels, David James Duncan has won the devotion of countless critics and readers, earning comparisons to Harper Lee, Tom Robbins, and J.D. Duncan claims that each person owns scores of river teeth and that they have the potential to guide, wound, and withstand time's erasure.

This version, capturing a moment in creative history, represents the first full expression of Kerouac’s revolutionary aesthetic. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "beat" and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that "set them free." From the back cover of On the Road: The Original Scroll : Jack Kerouac displaying one of his later scroll manuscripts, most likely The Dharma Bums Kerouac's map of his first hitchhiking trip, July-October 1947 (click image to see the full map). Original New York Times review of On the Road (click image to see the full review). --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

In his passionate, luminous novels, David James Duncan has won the devotion of countless critics and readers, earning comparisons to Harper Lee, Tom Robbins, and J.D. Duncan claims that each person owns scores of river teeth and that they have the potential to guide, wound, and withstand time's erasure.

Here is Ernest Hemingway’s first published story and a classic by William Faulkner, who admitted in his biographical note that he began to write “as an aid to love-making.” Nancy Hale’s story describes far-reaching echoes of the Holocaust; Tillie Olsen’s story expresses the desperation of a single mother; James Baldwin depicts the bonds of brotherhood and music. Moore writes that the process of assembling these stories allowed her to look “thrillingly not just at literary history but at actual history — the cries and chatterings, silences and descriptions of a nation in flux.” 100 Years of The Best American Short Stories is an invaluable testament, a retrospective of our country’s ever-changing but continually compelling literary artistry. For the centennial celebration of this beloved annual series, master of the form Lorrie Moore selects forty stories from the more than two thousand that were published in previous editions. Moore writes that the process of assembling these stories allowed her to look thrillingly not just at literary history but at actual history the cries and chatterings, silences and descriptions of a nation in flux.

– Paula Hawkins. From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You , a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town--and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. “Witnessing these two families as they commingle and clash is an utterly engrossing, often heartbreaking, deeply empathetic experience…It’s this vast and complex network of moral affiliations—and the nuanced omniscient voice that Ng employs to navigate it—that make this novel even more ambitious and accomplished than her debut…Our trusty narrator is as powerful and persuasive and delightfully clever as the narrator in a Victorian novel…It is a thrillingly democratic use of omniscience, and, for a novel about class, race, family and the dangers of the status quo, brilliantly apt…The magic of this novel lies in its power to implicate all of its characters—and likely many of its readers—in that innocent delusion [of a post-racial America]. She toggles between multiple points of view, creating a narrative both broad in scope and fine in detail, all while keeping the story moving at a thriller’s pace.” — LA Times “Riveting…unearthing the ways that race, class, motherhood and belonging intersect to shape each individual…Perhaps Ng's most impressive feat is inviting the reader's forgiveness for Mrs. Richardson –– a woman whose own mission for perfection, and strict adherence to rules ultimately become the catalyst for the maelstrom that ensues.” —Chicago Tribune. “Like Sue Monk Kidd or Madeleine Thien, Celeste Ng has a carpenter’s sure touch in constructing nested, interconnected plots…There are few novelists writing today who are as wise, compassionate and unsparing as Ng, about the choices you make, the ones you don’t, and the price you might pay for missed lives.” — Financial Times. “Like Everything I Never Told You , Ng’s excellent debut, the book plots its way into a smart, accessible conversation about race and class. “Ng writes with the wisdom of a hundred lives lived, churning out complex characters mostly sympathetic, sometimes loathsome, but all startlingly human.” — HarpersBazaar.com. “Fans of novelist Celeste Ng’s debut, Everything I Never Told You , and devotees of her resistance-ready Twitter feed can rejoice…The story drifts effortlessly between characters; each is full and memorable as they coax the novel to its fiery climax. “Couldn’t be more timely… Little Fires Everywhere might just be the signpost that we need, pointing a way forward with the gentle suggestion that sometimes doing the right thing means breaking some rules.” – Paste “Compelling… Little Fires Everywhere invests all of its emotional energies in the relationship between mothers and their children…in Ng’s precisely rendered perfect suburb.” – Vox. “Ng’s taut class drama is calibrated for fireworks.” – New York Magazine , Books to Read This Fall “Written with deep empathy and vivid characters who feel true to life, Little Fires Everywhere is a captivating, insightful examination of motherhood, identity, family, privilege, perfectionism, obsession, and the secrets about ourselves we try to hide.” – Buzzfeed. “There are few modern writers as brilliant at capturing the complexities of a family as Celeste Ng…The book is smart, nuanced, and exhilarating—but more than anything, Little Fires Everywhere is a gorgeous exploration of motherhood in its many forms, and the many different paths that women travel to get there.” — Shondaland.com. “Ng’s uncanny ability to embody multiple viewpoints makes for a powerful, revelatory novel.” – BBC.com, Ten Books to Read in September. “Ng has one-upped herself with her tremendous follow-up novel… a finely wrought meditation on the nature of motherhood, the dangers of privilege and a cautionary tale about how even the tiniest of secrets can rip families apart… Ng is a master at pushing us to look at our personal and societal flaws in the face and see them with new eyes… If “Little Fires Everywhere” doesn’t give you pause and help you think differently about humanity and this country’s current state of affairs, start over from the beginning and read the book again.” --San Francisco Chronicle. “Ng’s talent for depth of story and character development shines and will stay with you long after you’ve finished the book.” — Richmond Times-Dispatch “Immersive and thought-provoking…Hang on and prepare to be mesmerized as you meet two families in idyllic Shaker Heights, Ohio.” — The Missourian. “A multilayered, tightly focused and expertly plotted narrative…A deeply impressive novel with the power to provoke and entrance.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune “One of the best novels of the fall is an emotional tale about motherhood, class and so much more… Everything I Never Told You , was good, but this is better.” —AARP.org “Mesmerizing…The result is a deftly woven plot that examines a multitude of issues, including class, wealth, artistic vision, abortion, race, prejudice and cultural privilege.” —BookPage “Ng’s best-selling first novel Everything I Never Told You proved her deft hand at crafting family dramas with the deep-rooted tension of a thriller, a skill she puts to pitch-perfect effect in her latest entry…that is equal parts simmering and soulful.” —HarpersBazaar.com “A quiet but powerful look at family, secrets, and running from the past. “Ng’s stunning second novel is a multilayered examination of how identities are forged and maintained, how families are formed and friendships tested, and how the notion of motherhood is far more fluid than bloodlines would suggest…[A] tour de force.”— Booklist (starred review). “This incandescent portrait of suburbia and family, creativity, and consumerism burns bright…. As in Everything I Never Told You , Ng conjures a sense of place and displacement and shows a remarkable ability to see—and reveal—a story from different perspectives. -- Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes "As if it wasn't totally obvious from her stunning first novel, Little Fires Everywhere showcases what makes Celeste Ng such a masterful writer. Celeste Ng is a powerful and poignant writer whose attention to detail is pitch-perfect. An Amazon Best Book of September 2017: With her first two novels, Celeste Ng has established herself as a writer of rare sensitivity and talent. Ng is a master of family and societal dynamics, shifting perspectives, and the secrets that we try to protect—and readers who loved her debut will recognize the author in this second novel, even as she continues to stretch herself as a writer.

But Oscar may never get what he wants. A book that decisively establishes [Díaz] as one of contemporary fiction's most distinctive and irresistible new voices." He cuts his barn-burning comic-book plots (escape, ruin, redemption) with honest, messy realism, and his narrator speaks in a dazzling hash of Spanish, English, slang, literary flourishes, and pure virginal dorkiness." His narration is a triumph of style and wit, moving along Oscar de Leon's story with cracking, down-low humor, and at times expertly stunning us with heart-stabbing sentences. That Díaz's novel is also full of ideas, that [the narrator's] brilliant talking rivals the monologues of Roth's Zuckerman — in short, that what he has produced is a kick-ass (and truly, that is just the word for it) work of modern fiction — all make The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao something exceedingly rare: a book in which a new America can recognize itself, but so can everyone else." a mixture of straight-up English, Dominican Spanish, and hieratic nerdspeak crowded with references to Tolkien, DC Comics, role-playing games, and classic science fiction. The great achievement of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is Díaz's ability to balance an intimate multigenerational story of familial tragedy. It's Dominican and American, not about immigration but diaspora, in which one family's dramas are entwined with a nation's, not about history as information but as dark-force destroyer. In Díaz's landscape we are all the same, victims of a history and a present that doesn't just bleed together but stew. ". The Dominican Republic [Díaz] portrays in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a wild, beautiful, dangerous, and contradictory place, both hopelessly impoverished and impossibly rich. Not so different, perhaps, from anyone else's ancestral homeland, but Díaz's weirdly wonderful novel illustrates the island's uniquely powerful hold on Dominicans wherever they may wander. "Now that Díaz's second book, a novel called The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao , has finally arrived, younger writers will find that the bar. Oscar Wao shows a novelist engaged with the culture, high and low, and its polyglot language. If Donald Barthelme had lived to read Díaz, he surely would have been delighted to discover an intellectual and linguistic omnivore who could have taught even him a move or two." — Newsweek "Few books require a 'highly flammable' warning, but The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz's long-awaited first novel, will burn its way into your heart and sizzle your senses. Díaz's novel is drenched in the heated rhythms of the real world as much as it is laced with magical realism and classic fantasy stories." this fierce, funny, tragic book is just what a reader would have hoped for in a novel by Junot Díaz."

Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He expects disaster when he transfers from the reservation school to the rich, white school in Reardan, but soon finds himself making friends with both geeky and popular students and starting on the basketball team. The daily struggles of reservation life and the tragic deaths of the protagonist's grandmother, dog, and older sister would be all but unbearable without the humor and resilience of spirit with which Junior faces the world.

From the creator of the wildly popular webcomic xkcd, hilarious and informative answers to important questions you probably never thought to ask. In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. Fortunately, such people can turn to Randall Munroe, the author of the XKCD comic strip loved by fans of internet culture. For Munroe, who writes with a clarity and wit honed over eight years of writing captions for his webcomic, the fact that a question might be impossible to solve is no deterrent to pursuing it.” —Wall Street Journal Speakeasy blog. while dealing with relationships and the meaning of a computer-centric life, xkcd has become required reading for techies across the world….The Internet has also created a bond between Mr. Munroe and his readers that is exceptional. "With his steady regimen of math jokes, physics jokes, and antisocial optimism, xkcd creator Randall Munroe, a former NASA roboticist, scores traffic numbers in NBC.com or Oprah.com territory. [A]t its best [xkcd] isn’t a strip comic so much as an idea factory and a shared experience."