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.
In his introduction to this year's collection, James Ellroy explores the differences between the novel and the short story. Included here are experts at both forms. Featuring renowned novelists like Stuart Kaminsky, Michael Connelly, Joe Gores, and Robert B. Parker, as well as veterans of this series like Brendan DuBois, Michael Downs, Joyce Carol Oates, and Clark Howard, this edition will delight readers with its wide variety and peerless quality.
Contents Foreword by Otto Penzler Introduction by James Ellroy It Is Raining in Bejucal by John Biguenet Two-Bagger by Michael Connelly The Fix by Thomas H. Cook Summa Mathematica by Sean Doolittle Man Kills Wife, Two Dogs by Michael Downs A Family Game by Brendan DuBois The Blue Mirror by David Edgerley Gates Inscrutable by Joe Gores The Championship of Nowhere by James Grady The Cobalt Blues by Clark Howard Sometimes Something Goes Wrong by Stuart M. Kaminsky The Mule Rustlers by Joe R. Lansdale Maniac Loose by Michael Malone Counting by Fred Melton You Don't Know Me by Annette Meyers The High School Sweetheart by Joyce Carol Oates Harlem Nocturne by Robert B. Parker Midnight Emissions by F.X. Toole A Lepidopterist's Tale by Daniel Waterman The Copper Kings (HHC) by Scott Wolven
Lee Earle "James" Ellroy is an American crime fiction writer and essayist. Ellroy has become known for a telegrammatic prose style in his most recent work, wherein he frequently omits connecting words and uses only short, staccato sentences, and in particular for the novels The Black Dahlia (1987) and L.A. Confidential (1990).