American Literature Anthology

“What's most compelling about a scientific story is the way it challenges us to think about the concepts we take for granted,” writes guest editor Carl Zimmer in his introduction. The essays in this year’s Best American Science and Nature Writing probe at the ordinary and urge us to think more deeply about our place in the world around us.

In Mules and Men, some of the rich cultural heritage of black America is revealed and preserved. In the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her home town of Eatonville, Florida, to collect and record the oral histories, songs, and sermons, many dating back to slavery times, that she remembered hearing as a child. These highly metaphorical folktales, "big old lies", and powerful songs helped her to recover her history, and preserve an important part of American culture.

A striking and nuanced collection, bringing to life awkward college students, disgraced public figures, raunchy grandparents, and mystical godmothers. To listen to these stories is to experience the transporting joys of discovery and affirmation, and to realize that story writing in America continues to flourish.

Trapped in a London flat, Beth remembers a transgressive love affair in 1960s Paris. The most famous writer in Russia takes his last breath in a stationmaster’s cottage, miles from Moscow. A father, finally free of his daughter’s demands, embarks on a long swim from his Canadian lakeside retreat. And in the grandest house of all, Danni the Polish housekeeper catches the eye of an enigmatic visitor.Rose Tremain awakens the senses in this diverse collection of short stories.

A Generous Spirit: Selected Work by Beth Brant collects the writing of Beth Brant, Mohawk lesbian poet, essayist, and activist. During her life, Brant’s work gave voice to an often unacknowledged Two-Spirit identity, and today, her words represent continued strength, growth, and connection in the face of deep suffering.

These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries are selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic, oral qualities. Listen to these 10 unabridged classics by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, O. Henry, and Willa Cather.

In Enigma Variations, Aciman maps the most inscrutable corners of passion, proving to be an unsparing reader of the human psyche and a master stylist. With language at once lyrical, bare-knuckled, and unabashedly candid, he casts a sensuous, shimmering light over each facet of desire to probe how we ache, want, and waver, and ultimately how we sometimes falter and let go of those who may want to offer only what we crave from them.

Finally available after three decades, a lost classic of the Harlem Renaissance that Langston Hughes acclaimed for its "hard poetic beauty". Eric Walrond (1898 - 1966), in his only book, injected a profound Caribbean sensibility into black literature. His work was closest to that of Jean Toomer and Zora Neale Hurston with its striking use of dialect and its insights into the daily lives of the people around him.

To mark its 15th anniversary, and the very last edition of the series, the top-selling erotica anthology achieves a scorching new climax with a special edition showcasing standout stories from the entire series as well as never before published pieces - plus a hot and edgy piece from Susie Bright herself.

Comprising two distinct short novels - Monroe's Nightmare in Paradise and Bad Luck Shadow from critically acclaimed Victor McGlothin - Borrow Trouble is a hot double-feature that perfectly showcases each author's unique style.

Gospel comedy queen Pat G'orge-Walker regales listeners with the hilarious antics of Sister Betty and her South Carolina friends, big-hearted Ma Cile and redhaired Sister Connie Fuse. But things don't really start shakin' until on-the-make Deacon Laid Handz, manhungry Sister Carrie Onn, and conniving Reverend Knott Enuff Money get into the act. And yet for all of its rollicking humor, this book is brimming with profound and, at times, pointed truths about church life.

From the award-winning author of Chemistry comes a sharp and poignant short story that follows a young medical student working in clinical research and grappling with the realities of a future in her chosen field.

Reesa's a savvy financial planner with one goal - to have a baby before 35. But to do that, she's got to do one of two things: dump her current man, Simon, and find another man more suitable to be husband and father, or settle with Simon and work overtime trying to train him for the starring role. At 33, getting rid of Simon to find Mr. Right is a chance Reesa's not willing to take. But when she's had enough of Simon's antics and kicks him to the curb, will her goal change?

The transporting stories in this year’s The Best American Mystery and Suspense are populated by those who exist on the fringe of our society and want more than what life has dealt them: A haunted veteran turned career criminal is on the run. An injured fighter turned bouncer seeks vengeance for his lost love. An assassin on his last job finds himself questioning his life choices and breaks all the rules to understand his final victim.

The veil between the living and the dead is obscured, chaos becomes panacea, and characters take drastic measures into their own hands. Survivors of all kinds seek strategy and solace: a group of homeless people organize an occupation of vacant condos, a new resident to a disturbing neighbourhood tries to make sense of madness, a dog investigates the sudden disappearance of his owner. The five intertwined vignettes in the title story are set in a Caribbean country where the spectre of the sugar plantation haunts everyone.

From one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists comes Certain American States, whose insightful and lonely stories beg you to discover the emotional universes hiding at their cores. Catherine Lacey brings her narrative mastery to Certain American States, her first collection of short stories. As with her acclaimed novels, she gives life to a group of subtly complex, instantly memorable characters whose searches for love, struggles with grief, and tentative journeys into the minutiae of the human condition are simultaneously gripping and devastating.

Returning to the city that inspired his first prize-winning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens.

By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the great practitioners of the American short story. Where I'm Calling From, his last collection, encompasses classic stories from Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and earlier Carver volumes, along with seven new works previously unpublished in book form.

Paul Tremblay has won widespread acclaim for illuminating the dark horrors of the mind in novels and stories that push the boundaries of storytelling itself. The fifteen pieces in this brilliant collection, The Beast You Are, are all monsters of a kind, ready to loudly (and lovingly) smash through your head and into your heart.

Here are 10 unabridged stories by the greatest American authors. These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries were selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic oral qualities.