Contemporary American Short Stories

A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee and series editor Heidi Pitlor. “Without stories, we cannot live well,” shares guest editor Min Jin Lee, describing how storytelling affects and nurtures readers. The Best American Short...

In Contemporary Short Stories, you'll find controversies and moral dilemmas. All of them evolve around themes you may be familiar with in your own life. In a fictional setting, these issues come to light to help you think and enjoy the entertainment value of it at the same time. The stories will help you ponder the significance of questions you may ask yourself every day. All of these stories are integrated into a lighthearted setting in each of them.

“To read their stories felt to me the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time,” recalls Curtis Sittenfeld of her initial encounter with the Best American Short Stories series. “They were windows into emotions I had and hadn’t had, into other settings and...

This contemporary fiction book is an anthology of several short stories: Story 1: A man is in search for his beloved bird, which keeps flying away to different areas. However, the bird's pattern isn't random. Story 2: Nora has a gothic look and a secret superpower to teleport from one spot to another within sight. Story 3: Norman, a man with ADHD, finds a hidden treasure in the middle of the desert, and his bravery and entrepreneurial skills are put to the test. Story 4: Benjamin comes across a wishing well.

Unlike the other arts, American literature has been a powerful, influential, and leading aspect of American culture. By turns sedate and mercurial and possessing a moral mind set of various social values, the American short story reveals in its pages the psyche of a growing, sprawling nation whose sense of destiny has always been larger than life. Here are seven masterpieces that will make you smile, make you frown, and leave you pondering the mystery that surrounds the soul of a great nation.