The best American short stories 2013
(Book)

Mariner Book."

Presents twenty of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.

"In 'Miss Lora, ' Junot Díaz masterfully puts us in the mind of a teenage boy who throws aside his better sense and pursues an intimate affair with a high school teacher. Sheila Kohler tackles innocence and abuse as a child wanders away from her mother, in thrall to a stranger she believes is the 'Magic Man.' Kirstin Valdez Quade's 'Nemecia' depicts the after-effects of a secret, violent family trauma. Joan Wickersham's 'The Tunnel' is a tragic love story about a mother's declining health and her daughter's helplessness as she struggles to balance her responsibility to her mother and her own desires. New author Callan Wink's 'Breatharians' unsettles the reader as a farm boy shoulders a grim chore in the wake of his parents' estrangement. Elizabeth Strout was a wonderful reader, an author who knows well that the sound of one's writing is just as important as and indivisible from the content, ' writes series editor Heidi Pitlor. 'Here are twenty compellingly told, powerfully felt stories about urgent matters with profound consequences.'"--Publisher's website.

In English.