The Best American Short Stories is the longest running and best-selling series of short fiction in the country. 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. Series editor Heidi Pitlor recounts behind-the-scenes anecdotes and examines, decade by decade, the trends captured over a hundred years. Together, the stories and commentary offer an extraordinary guided tour through a century of literature with what Moore calls “all its wildnesses of character and voice.”

These forty stories represent their eras but also stand the test of time. 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. Here is Raymond Carver’s “minimalism,” a term he disliked, and Grace Paley’s “secular Yiddishkeit.” Here are the varied styles of Donald Barthelme, Charles Baxter, and Jamaica Kincaid. From Junot Díaz to Mary Gaitskill, from ZZ Packer to Sherman Alexie, these writers and stories explore the different things it means to be American.

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.

LORRIE MOORE, after many years as a professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin — Madison, is now the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Moore has received honors for her work, among them the Irish Times International Fiction Prize and a Lannan Foundation fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. Her most recent novel, A Gate at the Stairs, was short-listed for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction and for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and her most recent story collection, Bark, was short-listed for the Story Prize and the Frank O’Connor Award.

HEIDI PITLOR is a former senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and has been the series editor of The Best American Short Stories since 2007. She is the author of the novels The Birthdays and The Daylight Marriage.

Returning to his hometown after a failed marriage, recovering alcoholic Tom Winter purchases a house only to discover that it connects with another time and place—and his desire to “start over” suddenly becomes a literal possibility.

Wilson excels at psychological suspense, as the spiritual and emotional challenges his characters face are as intense as the physical dangers.

Nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award for Best novel in 1991

Why crime? Why exists this fascination with crime and why, above all, exists this fascination with crime on the part of female writers? Bestselling novelist Elizabeth George poses this question in her Introduction, answers it with her customary elegance and illustrates it with a rich and varied collection of international writers, some household names others buried treasures waiting to be rediscovered.

Brilliant and original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers introduces a remarkable new writer whose breathtaking stories are set in China and among Chinese Americans in the United States. In this rich, astonishing collection, Yiyun Li illuminates how mythology, politics, history, and culture intersect with personality to create fate. From the bustling heart of Beijing, to a fast-food restaurant in Chicago, to the barren expanse of Inner Mongolia, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers reveals worlds both foreign and familiar, with heartbreaking honesty and in beautiful prose.

“Immortality,” winner of The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for new writers, tells the story of a young man who bears a striking resemblance to a dictator and so finds a calling to immortality. In “The Princess of Nebraska,” a man and a woman who were both in love with a young actor in China meet again in America and try to reconcile the lost love with their new lives.

“After a Life” illuminates the vagaries of marriage, parenthood, and gender, unfolding the story of a couple who keep a daughter hidden from the world. And in “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” in which a man visits America for the first time to see his recently divorced daughter, only to discover that all is not as it seems, Li boldly explores the effects of communism on language, faith, and an entire people, underlining transformation in its many meanings and incarnations.

These and other daring stories form a mesmerizing tapestry of revelatory fiction by an unforgettable writer.

Set in the year 2375, the novel follows Tom Rice, a young archaeologist attached to a two-year dig on the planet of Highby V. He is searching for artifacts belonging to a long-lost and ancient race known simply as The High Ones. Throughout known space, details of this billion-year old civilization have been uncovered on many planets. What seems like a fairly straightforward expedition becomes a galactic odyssey when an artifact never seen before is uncovered. This device hints that perhaps the High Ones are not extinct at all. But, if they are not, then where are they? And will this lead to the culmination of Mankind’s greatest challenge or greatest disaster?

Against The Tide Of Years continues the adventures of the Nantucket residents who have been transported through time to the Bronze Age. In the years since their arrival, the fledging Republic of Nantucket has strived to better the primitive world in which they now exist. Their prime concerns are establishing a constitution and handling the waves of immigrants from the British Isles. But a renegade time traveler plans his own future by forging an empire for himself based on conquest by modern technology. The Republic has no alternative but to face the inevitable war brought on by one of their own….

Against The Tide Of Years continues the adventures of the Nantucket residents who have been transported through time to the Bronze Age. In the years since their arrival, the fledging Republic of Nantucket has strived to better the primitive world in which they now exist. Their prime concerns are establishing a constitution and handling the waves of immigrants from the British Isles. But a renegade time traveler plans his own future by forging an empire for himself based on conquest by modern technology. The Republic has no alternative but to face the inevitable war brought on by one of their own….

The award-winning author Amit Chaudhuri has been widely praised for the beauty and subtle power of his writing and for the ways in which he makes “place” as complex a character as his men and women. Now he brings these gifts to a spellbinding amalgam of memoir, reportage, and history in this intimate, luminous portrait of Calcutta.

Chaudhuri guides us through the city where he was born, the home he loved as a child, the setting of his acclaimed novels — a place he now finds captivating for all the ways it has, and, perhaps more powerfully, has not, changed. He shows us a city relatively untouched by the currents of globalization but possessed of a “self-renewing way of seeing, of inhabiting space, of apprehending life.” He takes us along vibrant avenues and derelict alleyways; introduces us to intellectuals, Marxists, members of the declining haute bourgeoisie, street vendors, domestic workers; brings to life the city’s sounds and smells, its architecture, its traditional shops and restaurants, new malls and hotels. And, using the historic elections of 2011 as a fulcrum, Chaudhuri looks back to the nineteenth century, when the city burst with a new vitality, and toward the politics of the present, finding a city “still not recovered from history” yet possessed of a singular modernity.

Chaudhuri observes and writes about Calcutta with rare candor and clarity, making graspable the complex, ultimately ineluctable reasons for his passionate attachment to the place and its people.

Adding to a fiction chronicle that has already spanned American history from the Lincoln assassination to the Watergate scandal, Thomas Mallon now brings to life the tumultuous administration of the most consequential and enigmatic president in modern times.

Finale captures the crusading ideologies, blunders, and glamour of the still-hotly-debated Reagan years, taking readers to the political gridiron of Washington, the wealthiest enclaves of Southern California, and the volcanic landscape of Iceland, where the president engages in two almost apocalyptic days of negotiation with Mikhail Gorbachev.

Along with Soviet dissidents, illegal-arms traders, and antinuclear activists, the novel’s memorable characters include Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter, Pamela Harriman, John W. Hinckley, Jr. (Reagan’s would-be assassin), and even Bette Davis, with whom the president had long ago appeared onscreen. Several figures — including a humbled, crafty Richard Nixon; the young, brilliantly acerbic Christopher Hitchens; and an anxious, astrology-dependent Nancy Reagan (on the verge of a terrible realization) — become the eyes through which readers see the last convulsions of the Cold War, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and a political revolution.

At the center of it all — but forever out of reach — is Ronald Reagan himself, whose genial remoteness confounds his subordinates, his children, and the citizens who elected him.

Finale is the book that Thomas Mallon’s work has been building toward for years. It is the most entertaining and panoramic novel about American politics since Advise and Consent, more than a half century ago.

'Absolutely, definitively alone', a young Jewish student in Romania tries to make sense of a world that has decided he doesn't belong. Spending his days walking the streets and his nights drinking and gambling, meeting revolutionaries, zealots, lovers and libertines, he adjusts his eyes to the darkness that falls over Europe, and threatens to destroy him.

Mihail Sebastian's 1934 masterpiece, now translated into English for the first time, was written amid the anti-Semitism which would, by the end of the decade, force him out of his career and turn his friends and colleagues against him. For Two Thousand Years is a prescient, heart-wrenching chronicle of resilience and despair, broken layers of memory and the terrible forces of history.

This facsimile of Melville's historical novel appears in a paperback classroom edition, with a commentary by Hennig Cohen. "Israel Potter" is the story of a neglected hero of the American Revolution.

Hailed as one of the most important portrayals of the dark years of Nazism, this powerful chronicle by the Romanian Jewish writer Mihail Sebastian aroused a furious response in Eastern Europe when it was first published. A profound and powerful literary achievement, it offers a lucid and finely shaded analysis of erotic and social life, a Jew s diary, a reader s notebook, a music-lover s journal. Above all, it is an account of the rhinocerization of major Romanian intellectuals whom Sebastian counted among his friends, including Mircea Eliade and E.M. Cioran, writers and thinkers who were mesmerized by the Nazi-fascist delirium of Europe s reactionary revolution. In poignant, unforgettable sequences, Sebastian follows the grinding progression of the machinery of brutalization and traces the historical context in which it developed. Despite the pressure of hatred and horror in the huge anti-Semitic factory that was Romania in the years of World War II, his writing maintains the grace of its perceptive and luminous intelligence. The legacy of a journalist, novelist, and playwright, Sebastian s Journal stands as one of the most important human and literary documents of the climate that preceded the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum"

One day, during a family seaside holiday, something which has already begun to fray quietly snaps. Delia simply walks off the beach, away from her husband, Sam, and her three almost grown-up children. In a nearby town, she reinvents herself as a serious and independent-minded woman without ties.

This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master.

It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But even as he lingers over the surface of their marriage, Salter lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair.

Seductive, witty, and elegantly nuanced, Light Years is a classic novel of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness—and then felt compelled to destroy it.

An extraordinary coming-of-age memoir by the Nobel-Prize-winning playwright.

My First Seven Years is Dario Fo's fantastic, enchanting memoir of his youth spent in Northern Italy on the shores of Lago Maggiore. As a child, Fo grew up in a picturesque village teeming with glass-blowers, smugglers and storytellers. Of his teenage years, Fo recounts the struggles of the Fascists and Partisans, the years of World War II, and his own tragicomic experience trying to desert the Fascist army.

In a series of colorful vignettes, Fo draws us into a remarkable early life filled with characters and anecdotes that would become the inspiration for his own creative genius.

First published in Playboy 1956/9; also known as "Love, Incorporated".

Part of Pilgrimage to Earth collection of science fiction short stories by Robert Sheckley published in 1957 by Bantam Books.

On a crisp January day, a Presidential Inauguration day, a one-megaton blast ripped through the Soviet embassy in Washington DC.

Subsequent explosions around the globe changed the face and the shape of the earth forever. Out of the ruins emerged Deathlands, a world that conspired against survival.

In the blasted heart of the new America, a group of men and women plan desperately to escape the eerie wastes and mutated life forms of their nuclear hell. Three Warriors — the tough, intelligent Ryan Cawdor, an enigmatic beauty called Krysty Wroth, and the armorer J.B. Dix, — set out on a harrowing journey to find a rumored enclave high in the mountains.

Their aim: to unlock the secrets of pre-war scientific experiments that could hold the answer to survival in the Deathlands of the future.

Alex has spent the majority of his adult life between two very different women — and he can’t make up his mind. Sonia, his wife and business partner, is everything a man would want. Intelligent, gorgeous, charming, and ambitious, she worked tirelessly alongside him to open their architecture firm and to build a life of luxury. But when the seven-year itch sets in, their exhaustion at working long hours coupled with their failed attempts at starting a family get the best of them. Alex soon finds himself kindling an affair with his college lover, Ivona. The young Polish woman who worked in a Catholic mission is the polar opposite of Sonia: dull, passive, taciturn, and plain. Despite having little in common with Ivona, Alex is inexplicably drawn to her while despising himself for it. Torn between his highbrow marriage and his lowbrow affair, Alex is stuck within a spiraling threesome. But when Ivona becomes pregnant, life takes an unexpected turn, and Alex is puzzled more than ever by the mysteries of his heart.

Peter Stamm, one of Switzerland’s most acclaimed writers, is at his best exploring the complexities of human relationships. Seven Years is a distinct, sobering, and bold novel about the impositions of happiness in the quest for love.

The Carmichael family are leading the fight against the Entities from their mountain ranch. While they search for Prime, the centre of alien intelligence, a quisling in Prague manages to win the Entities’ confidence. But what legacy will the aliens leave behind them when they go?

Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Poul Anderson tells a breathtaking tale of Earth. Immortal humans take to the skies to travel to the stars and galaxies in a great space adventure.

Nominated for the Nebula Award in 1989.

Nominated for the Hugo Award in 1990.

TRUTH IS NOT AN OPTION…

Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one can care less. Except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that has possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn – not only about their leaders, but also about their own people – stuns them to the core. It is a message that will rock the world…

Terrifying methods of cunning, deception and terror are unveiled by the truth-seekers in this thriller-expose of the Communist Party's stranglehold on China today.

The Hotel Years gathers sixty-four feuilletons: on hotels; pains and pleasures; personalities; and the deteriorating international situation of the 1930s. Never before translated into English, these pieces begin in Vienna just at the end of the First World War, and end in Paris near the outbreak of the Second World War. Roth, the great journalist of his day, needed journalism to survive: in his six-volume collected works in German, there are three of fiction and three of journalism. Beginning in 1921, Roth wrote mostly for the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung who sent him on assignments throughout Germany — the inflation, the occupation, political assassinations — and abroad, to the USSR, Italy, Poland and Albania. And always: “I celebrate my return to lobby and chandelier, porter and chambermaid.”

Mitchell S. Jackson grew up black in a neglected neighborhood in America’s whitest city, Portland, Oregon. In the ’90s, those streets and beyond had fallen under the shadow of crack cocaine and its familiar mayhem. In his commanding autobiographical novel, Mitchell writes what it was to come of age in that time and place, with a break-out voice that’s nothing less than extraordinary.

The Residue Years switches between the perspectives of a young man, Champ, and his mother, Grace. Grace is just out of a drug treatment program, trying to stay clean and get her kids back. Champ is trying to do right by his mom and younger brothers, and dreams of reclaiming the only home he and his family have ever shared. But selling crack is the only sure way he knows to achieve his dream. In this world of few options and little opportunity, where love is your strength and your weakness, this family fights for family and against what tears one apart.

Honest in its portrayal, with cadences that dazzle, The Residue Years signals the arrival of a writer set to awe.

This entire novel consists of a discussion between two friends — one who just returned from Europe, the other a young accountant — about a grand birthday party neither one was able to attend. This doesn't stop them from swapping stories and hypotheses, which balloon into a riveting depiction of the complexities of life, especially at the dawn of Argentina's Dirty War.

The supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real… tales of the dark. Such stories have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while inventing imaginative new ways to unsettle us. Chosen from a wide variety of venues, these stories are as eclectic and varied as shadows. This volume of 2017’s best dark fantasy and horror offers more than five hundred pages of tales from some of today’s finest writers of the fantastique—sure to delight as well as disturb…

HORRORS GALORE!

“Wagner has done his work well, and DAW deserves the thanks of horror readers, and librarians catering to them, for keeping this anthology going, its price low, and its quality high”.

So comments the American Library Association’s Booklist about this series, and this latest volume will uphold their estimate. Once again Karl Edward Wagner has probed the horror tales of the past year and come up with a headsman’s basket of spine-chilling goodies.

Among the authors you will find: Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Michael Kube-McDowell, Manly Wade Wellman, M. John Harrison, Sheila Hodgson, and many more.

All sure to give you the willies! Don’t try reading them all at one sitting!

Welcome To The Frightmare Lands…

Imagination can be a terrible revenge when a storybook character takes on a life of his own….

Trick or treat suddenly takes on a whole new meaning for one doctor who has long been exercising his powers over life and death….

When two boys' existences and identities somehow become intertwined, is one the dreamer and the other a dream?

She thought she'd found the ideal apartment until it began to take on an eerie life of its own….

These are just a few of the twenty-six dwelling places of terror you'll visit in…

TERRIFYING STORIES THAT WILL LEAVE YOU SHUDDERING AT EVERY BARELY GLIMPSED SHADOW—

Once again, Karl Edward Wagner has dared to prowl where many fear to tread, seeking out the finest tales of terror by such masters of malice and mayhem as Ramsey Campbell and Ed Gorman—haunting and harrowing legends calculated to strike fear in the hearts of even the most stalwart readers.

A photographer whose obsession with images may bring to life trouble beyond his wildest fantasies…. A couple caught up in an ancient ritual that offers the promise of unending health, but at a price that may prove far too high…. A woman whose memory may be failing her with the passing years—or for a far more unnatural reason…. These are just three of the provocative, imagination-grasping stories included in this year’s ghoulish gallery.

“…THE JUICIEST BLOODFEST, THE MOST IRONIC CONTE CRUEL, THE SUBTLEST EVOCATION OF WISPY HORROR.”

—Washington Post Book World

Return, if you dare, to the dark realms of terror with intrepid guide Karl Edward Wagner as he once again seeks out the most fear-inspiring tales of the year. Cower in horror as Jack the Ripper reaches out from the grave to take bloody vengeance on a rock band… even as a “retired” serial killer experiences the perfect end to a perfect life… while an injured woman receives a blood transfusion only to find she has lost control of her will… and a garbage dump spawns a malignant new breed of life—or death…

Join Dennis Etchison, Ramsey Campbell, Wayne Allen Sallee, T.E.D. Klein, Lisa Tuttle, and their fellow masterminds of the macabre on this year’s unforgettable, chill-packed journey into the heart of the horrific!

OPEN THE CREAKING DOOR OF TERROR AND ENTER A WORLD WHERE FEAR IS YOUR ONLY COMPANION…

A kid’s camping supplies turn out to be not quite what the catalog advertised…

A pulp writer’s imagination really gets the better of him…

A suburban dog-run turns out to be an exercise in terror…

A juror’s identification with a convicted murderer becomes more than simple sympathy…

TRAVEL INTO REALMS WHERE NIGHTMARES LURK AT EVERY CORNER. THE ONLY TOUR-GUIDE YOU’LL NEED IS…

THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR: XXII

The multiple Locus Award-winning annual collection of the year’s best science fiction stories.

In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self-evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow, blurring the line between life and art. Now, in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection, the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world. This venerable collection brings together award-winning authors and masters of the field. With an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.

In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow, blurring the line between life and art. Now, in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world. This venerable collection brings together short stories from award winning authors and masters of the field such as Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Damien Broderick, Elizabeth Bear, Paul McAuley and John Barnes. And with an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.

In this collection of thirty-five science fiction stories from 2011, Gardner Dozois once again identifies the best stories of the year.

A radiant family saga set in a century of Mexican history, by one of the world's greatest writers.Carlos Fuentes's hope-filled new novel sees the twentieth century through the eyes of Laura D'az, a woman who becomes as much a part of our history as of the Mexican history she observes and helps to create. Born in 1898, this extraordinary woman grows into a wife and mother, becomes the lover of great men, and, before her death in 1972, is celebrated as a politically committed artist. A complicated and alluring heroine, she lives a happy life despite the tragedies and losses she experiences, for she has borne witness to great changes in her country's life, and she has loved and understood with unflinching honesty.In his most important novel in decades, Carlos Fuentes has created a world filled with brilliantly colored scenes and heartbreaking dramas. The result is a novel of subtle, penetrating insight and immense power.

In the summer of 1812, before the Oprichniki came to the help of Mother Russia in her fight against Napoleon, one of their number overheard a conversation between his master, Zmyeevich, and another. He learned of a feud, an unholy grievance between Zmyeevich and the rulers of Russia, the Romanovs, that began a century earlier at the time of Peter the Great. Indeed, while the Oprichniki's primary reason for journeying to Russia is to stop the French, one of them takes a different path. For he has a different agenda, he is to be the nightmare instrument of revenge on the Romanovs. But thanks to the valiant efforts of Captain Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, this maverick monster would not be able to begin to complete his task until thirteen years later. Now that time has come: it is 1825 and Russia once more stands on the brink of anarchy, and this time the threat comes from within…

INTRODUCTORY—ANCESTRY—THE NORTHUP FAMILY—BIRTH AND PARENTAGE—MINTUS NORTHUP—MARRIAGE WITH ANNE HAMPTON—GOOD RESOLUTIONS—CHAMPLAIN CANAL—RAFTING EXCURSION TO CANADA—FARMING—THE VIOLIN—COOKING—REMOVAL TO SARATOGA—PARKER AND PERRY—SLAVES AND SLAVERY—THE CHILDREN—THE BEGINNING OF SORROW.

THE TWO STRANGERS—THE CIRCUS COMPANY—DEPARTURE FROM SARATOGA—VENTRILOQUISM AND LEGERDEMAIN—JOURNEY TO NEW-YORK—FREE PAPERS—BROWN AND HAMILTON—THE HASTE TO REACH THE CIRCUS—ARRIVAL IN WASHINGTON—FUNERAL OF HARRISON—THE SUDDEN SICKNESS—THE TORMENT OF THIRST—THE RECEDING LIGHT—INSENSIBILITY—CHAINS AND DARKNESS.

PAINFUL MEDITATIONS—JAMES H. BURCH—WILLIAMS' SLAVE PEN IN WASHINGTON—THE LACKEY, RADBURN—ASSERT MY FREEDOM—THE ANGER OF THE TRADER—THE PADDLE AND CAT-O'-NINETAILS—THE WHIPPING—NEW ACQUAINTANCES—RAY, WILLIAMS, AND RANDALL—ARRIVAL OF LITTLE EMILY AND HER MOTHER IN THE PEN—MATERNAL SORROWS—THE STORY OF ELIZA.

ELIZA'S SORROWS—PREPARATION TO EMBARK—DRIVEN THROUGH THE STREETS OF WASHINGTON—HAIL, COLUMBIA—THE TOMB OF WASHINGTON—CLEM RAY—THE BREAKFAST ON THE STEAMER—THE HAPPY BIRDS—AQUIA CREEK—FREDERICKSBURGH—ARRIVAL IN RICHMOND—GOODIN AND HIS SLAVE PEN—ROBERT, OF CINCINNATI—DAVID AND HIS WIFE—MARY AND LETHE—CLEM'S RETURN—HIS SUBSEQUENT ESCAPE TO CANADA—THE BRIG ORLEANS—JAMES H. BURCH.

ARRIVAL AT NORFOLK—FREDERICK AND MARIA—ARTHUR, THE FREEMAN—APPOINTED STEWARD—JIM, CUFFEE, AND JENNY—THE STORM—BAHAMA BANKS—THE CALM—THE CONSPIRACY—THE LONG BOAT—THE SMALL-POX—DEATH OF ROBERT—MANNING, THE SAILOR—THE MEETING IN THE FORECASTLE—THE LETTER—ARRIVAL AT NEW-ORLEANS—ARTHUR'S RESCUE—THEOPHILUS FREEMAN, THE CONSIGNEE—PLATT—FIRST NIGHT IN THE NEW-ORLEANS SLAVE PEN.

FREEMAN'S INDUSTRY—CLEANLINESS AND CLOTHES—EXERCISING IN THE SHOW ROOM—THE DANCE—BOB, THE FIDDLER—ARRIVAL OF CUSTOMERS—SLAVES EXAMINED—THE OLD GENTLEMAN OF NEW-ORLEANS—SALE OF DAVID, CAROLINE AND LETHE—PARTING OF RANDALL AND ELIZA—SMALL POX—THE HOSPITAL—RECOVERY AND RETURN TO FREEMAN'S SLAVE PEN—THE PURCHASER OF ELIZA, HARRY AND PLATT—ELIZA'S AGONY ON PARTING FROM LITTLE EMILY.

THE STEAMBOAT RODOLPH—DEPARTURE FROM NEW-ORLEANS—WILLIAM FORD—ARRIVAL AT ALEXANDRIA, ON RED RIVER—RESOLUTIONS—THE GREAT PINE WOODS—WILD CATTLE—MARTIN'S SUMMER RESIDENCE—THE TEXAS ROAD—ARRIVAL AT MASTER FORD'S—ROSE—MISTRESS FORD—SALLY, AND HER CHILDREN—JOHN, THE COOK—WALTER, SAM, AND ANTONY—THE MILLS ON INDIAN CREEK—SABBATH DAYS—SAM'S CONVERSION—THE PROFIT OF KINDNESS—RAFTING—ADAM TAYDEM, THE LITTLE WHITE MAN—CASCALLA AND HIS TRIBE—THE INDIAN BALL—JOHN M. TIBEATS—THE STORM APPROACHING.

FORD'S EMBARRASSMENTS—THE SALE TO TIBEATS—THE CHATTEL MORTGAGE—MISTRESS FORD'S PLANTATION ON BAYOU BŒUF—DESCRIPTION OF THE LATTER—FORD'S BROTHER-IN-LAW, PETER TANNER—MEETING WITH ELIZA—SHE STILL MOURNS FOR HER CHILDREN—FORD'S OVERSEER, CHAPIN—TIBEAT'S ABUSE—THE KEG OF NAILS—THE FIRST FIGHT WITH TIBEATS—HIS DISCOMFITURE AND CASTIGATION—THE ATTEMPT TO HANG ME—CHAPIN'S INTERFERENCE AND SPEECH—UNHAPPY REFLECTIONS—ABRUPT DEPARTURE OF TIBEATS, COOK AND RAMSAY—LAWSON AND THE BROWN MULE—MESSAGE TO THE PINE WOODS.

THE HOT SUN—YET BOUND—THE CORDS SINK INTO MY FLESH—CHAPIN'S UNEASINESS—SPECULATION—RACHEL, AND HER CUP OF WATER—SUFFERING INCREASES—THE HAPPINESS OF SLAVERY—ARRIVAL OF FORD—HE CUTS THE CORDS WHICH BIND ME, AND TAKES THE ROPE FROM MY NECK—MISERY—THE GATHERING OF THE SLAVES IN ELIZA'S CABIN—THEIR KINDNESS—RACHEL REPEATS THE OCCURRENCES OF THE DAY—LAWSON ENTERTAINS HIS COMPANIONS WITH AN ACCOUNT OF HIS RIDE—CHAPIN'S APPREHENSIONS OF TIBEATS—HIRED TO PETER TANNER—PETER EXPOUNDS THE SCRIPTURES—DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCKS.

RETURN TO TIBEATS—IMPOSSIBILITY OF PLEASING HIM—HE ATTACKS ME WITH A HATCHET—THE STRUGGLE OVER THE BROAD AXE—THE TEMPTATION TO MURDER HIM—ESCAPE ACROSS THE PLANTATION—OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FENCE—TIBEATS APPROACHES, FOLLOWED BY THE HOUNDS—THEY TAKE MY TRACK—THEIR LOUD YELLS—THEY ALMOST OVERTAKE ME—I REACH THE WATER—THE HOUNDS CONFUSED—MOCCASIN SNAKES—ALLIGATORS—NIGHT IN THE "GREAT PACOUDRIE SWAMP"—THE SOUNDS OF LIFE—NORTH-WEST COURSE—EMERGE INTO THE PINE WOODS—THE SLAVE AND HIS YOUNG MASTER—ARRIVAL AT FORD'S—FOOD AND REST.

THE MISTRESS' GARDEN—THE CRIMSON AND GOLDEN FRUIT—ORANGE AND POMEGRANATE TREES—RETURN TO BAYOU BŒUF—MASTER FORD'S REMARKS ON THE WAY—THE MEETING WITH TIBEATS—HIS ACCOUNT OF THE CHASE—FORD CENSURES HIS BRUTALITY—ARRIVAL AT THE PLANTATION—ASTONISHMENT OF THE SLAVES ON SEEING ME—THE ANTICIPATED FLOGGING—KENTUCKY JOHN—MR. ELDRET, THE PLANTER—ELDRET'S SAM—TRIP TO THE "BIG CANE BRAKE"—THE TRADITION OF "SUTTON'S FIELD"—FOREST TREES—GNATS AND MOSQUITOS—THE ARRIVAL OF BLACK WOMEN IN THE BIG CANE—LUMBER WOMEN—SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF TIBEATS—HIS PROVOKING TREATMENT—VISIT TO BAYOU BŒUF—THE SLAVE PASS—SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY—THE LAST OF ELIZA—SALE TO EDWIN EPPS.

PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF EPPS—EPPS, DRUNK AND SOBER—A GLIMPSE OF HIS HISTORY—COTTON GROWING—THE MODE OF PLOUGHING AND PREPARING GROUND—OF PLANTING—OF HOEING, OF PICKING, OF TREATING RAW HANDS—THE DIFFERENCE IN COTTON PICKERS—PATSEY A REMARKABLE ONE—TASKED ACCORDING TO ABILITY—BEAUTY OF A COTTON FIELD—THE SLAVE'S LABORS—FEAR ON APPROACHING THE GIN-HOUSE—WEIGHING—"CHORES"—CABIN LIFE—THE CORN MILL—THE USES OF THE GOURD—FEAR OF OVERSLEEPING—FEAR CONTINUALLY—MODE OF CULTIVATING CORN—SWEET POTATOES—FERTILITY OF THE SOIL—FATTENING HOGS—PRESERVING BACON—RAISING CATTLE—SHOOTING-MATCHES—GARDEN PRODUCTS—FLOWERS AND VERDURE.

THE CURIOUS AXE-HELVE—SYMPTOMS OF APPROACHING ILLNESS—CONTINUE TO DECLINE—THE WHIP INEFFECTUAL—CONFINED TO THE CABIN—VISIT BY DR. WINES—PARTIAL RECOVERY—FAILURE AT COTTON PICKING—WHAT MAY BE HEARD ON EPPS' PLANTATION—LASHES GRADUATED—EPPS IN A WHIPPING MOOD—EPPS IN A DANCING MOOD—DESCRIPTION OF THE DANCE—LOSS OF REST NO EXCUSE—EPPS' CHARACTERISTICS—JIM BURNS REMOVAL FROM HUFF POWER TO BAYOU BŒUF—DESCRIPTION OF UNCLE ABRAM; OF WILEY; OF AUNT PHEBE; OF BOB, HENRY, AND EDWARD; OF PATSEY; WITH A GENEALOGICAL ACCOUNT OF EACH—SOMETHING OF THEIR PAST HISTORY, AND PECULIAR CHARACTERISTICS—JEALOUSY AND LUST—PATSEY, THE VICTIM.

DESTRUCTION OF THE COTTON CROP IN 1845—DEMAND FOR LABORERS IN ST. MARY'S PARISH—SENT THITHER IN A DROVE—THE ORDER OF THE MARCH—THE GRAND COTEAU—HIRED TO JUDGE TURNER ON BAYOU SALLE—APPOINTED DRIVER IN HIS SUGAR HOUSE—SUNDAY SERVICES SLAVE FURNITURE, HOW OBTAINED—THE PARTY AT YARNEY'S IN CENTREVILLE—GOOD FORTUNE—THE CAPTAIN OF THE STEAMER—HIS REFUSAL TO SECRETE ME—RETURN TO BAYOU BŒUF—SIGHT OF TIBEATS—PATSEY'S SORROWS—TUMULT AND CONTENTION—HUNTING THE COON AND OPOSSUM—THE CUNNING OF THE LATTER—THE LEAN CONDITION OF THE SLAVE—DESCRIPTION OF THE FISH TRAP—THE MURDER OF THE MAN FROM NATCHEZ—EPPS CHALLENGED BY MARSHALL—THE INFLUENCE OF SLAVERY—THE LOVE OF FREEDOM.

LABORS ON SUGAR PLANTATIONS—THE MODE OF PLANTING CANE—OF HOEING CANE—CANE RICKS—CUTTING CANE—DESCRIPTION OF THE CANE KNIFE—WINROWING—PREPARING FOR SUCCEEDING CROPS—DESCRIPTION OF HAWKINS' SUGAR MILL ON BAYOU BŒUF—THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS—THE CARNIVAL SEASON OF THE CHILDREN OF BONDAGE—THE CHRISTMAS SUPPER—RED, THE FAVORITE COLOR—THE VIOLIN, AND THE CONSOLATION IT AFFORDED—THE CHRISTMAS DANCE—LIVELY, THE COQUETTE—SAM ROBERTS, AND HIS RIVALS—SLAVE SONGS—SOUTHERN LIFE AS IT IS—THREE DAYS IN THE YEAR—THE SYSTEM OF MARRIAGE—UNCLE ABRAM'S CONTEMPT OF MATRIMONY.

OVERSEERS—HOW THEY ARE ARMED AND ACCOMPANIED—THE HOMICIDE—HIS EXECUTION AT MARKSVILLE—SLAVE-DRIVERS—APPOINTED DRIVER ON REMOVING TO BAYOU BŒUF—PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT—EPPS' ATTEMPT TO CUT PLATT'S THROAT—THE ESCAPE FROM HIM—PROTECTED BY THE MISTRESS—FORBIDS READING AND WRITING—OBTAIN A SHEET OF PAPER AFTER NINE YEARS' EFFORT—THE LETTER—ARMSBY, THE MEAN WHITE—PARTIALLY CONFIDE IN HIM—HIS TREACHERY—EPPS' SUSPICIONS—HOW THEY WERE QUIETED—BURNING THE LETTER—ARMSBY LEAVES THE BAYOU—DISAPPOINTMENT AND DESPAIR.

WILEY DISREGARDS THE COUNSELS OF AUNT PHEBE AND UNCLE ABRAM, AND IS CAUGHT BY THE PATROLLERS—THE ORGANIZATION AND DUTIES OF THE LATTER—WILEY RUNS AWAY—SPECULATIONS IN REGARD TO HIM—HIS UNEXPECTED RETURN—HIS CAPTURE ON RED RIVER, AND CONFINEMENT IN ALEXANDRIA JAIL—DISCOVERED BY JOSEPH B. ROBERTS—SUBDUING DOGS IN ANTICIPATION OF ESCAPE—THE FUGITIVES IN THE GREAT PINE WOODS—CAPTURED BY ADAM TAYDEM AND THE INDIANS—AUGUSTUS KILLED BY DOGS—NELLY, ELDRET'S SLAVE WOMAN—THE STORY OF CELESTE—THE CONCERTED MOVEMENT—LEW CHENEY, THE TRAITOR—THE IDEA OF INSURRECTION.

O'NIEL, THE TANNER—CONVERSATION WITH AUNT PHEBE OVERHEARD—EPPS IN THE TANNING BUSINESS—STABBING OF UNCLE ABRAM—THE UGLY WOUND—EPPS IS JEALOUS—PATSEY IS MISSING—HER RETURN FROM SHAW'S—HARRIET, SHAW'S BLACK WIFE—EPPS ENRAGED—PATSEY DENIES HIS CHARGES—SHE IS TIED DOWN NAKED TO FOUR STAKES—THE INHUMAN FLOGGING—FLAYING OF PATSEY—THE BEAUTY OF THE DAY—THE BUCKET OF SALT WATER—THE DRESS STIFF WITH BLOOD—PATSEY GROWS MELANCHOLY—HER IDEA OF GOD AND ETERNITY—OF HEAVEN AND FREEDOM—THE EFFECT OF SLAVE-WHIPPING—EPPS' OLDEST SON—"THE CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN."

AVERY, OF BAYOU ROUGE—PECULIARITY OF DWELLINGS—EPPS BUILDS A NEW HOUSE—BASS, THE CARPENTER—HIS NOBLE QUALITIES—HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND ECCENTRICITIES—BASS AND EPPS DISCUSS THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY—EPPS' OPINION OF BASS—I MAKE MYSELF KNOWN TO HIM—OUR CONVERSATION—HIS SURPRISE—THE MIDNIGHT MEETING ON THE BAYOU BANK—BASS' ASSURANCES—DECLARES WAR AGAINST SLAVERY—WHY I DID NOT DISCLOSE MY HISTORY—BASS WRITES LETTERS—COPY OF HIS LETTER TO MESSRS. PARKER AND PERRY—THE FEVER OF SUSPENSE—DISAPPOINTMENTS—BASS ENDEAVORS TO CHEER ME—MY FAITH IN HIM.

BASS FAITHFUL TO HIS WORD—HIS ARRIVAL ON CHRISTMAS EVE—THE DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING AN INTERVIEW—THE MEETING IN THE CABIN—NON-ARRIVAL OF THE LETTER—BASS ANNOUNCES HIS INTENTION TO PROCEED NORTH—CHRISTMAS—CONVERSATION BETWEEN EPPS AND BASS—YOUNG MISTRESS M'COY, THE BEAUTY OF BAYOU BŒUF—THE "NE PLUS ULTRA" OF DINNERS—MUSIC AND DANCING—PRESENCE OF THE MISTRESS—HER EXCEEDING BEAUTY—THE LAST SLAVE DANCE—WILLIAM PIERCE—OVERSLEEP MYSELF—THE LAST WHIPPING—DESPONDENCY—THE COLD MORNING—EPPS' THREATS—THE PASSING CARRIAGE—STRANGERS APPROACHING THROUGH THE COTTON-FIELD—LAST HOUR ON BAYOU BŒUF.

THE LETTER REACHES SARATOGA—IS FORWARDED TO ANNE—IS LAID BEFORE HENRY B. NORTHUP—THE STATUTE OF MAY 14, 1840—ITS PROVISIONS—ANNE'S MEMORIAL TO THE GOVERNOR—THE AFFIDAVITS ACCOMPANYING IT—SENATOR SOULE'S LETTER—DEPARTURE OF THE AGENT APPOINTED BY THE GOVERNOR—ARRIVAL AT MARKSVILLE—THE HON. JOHN P. WADDILL—THE CONVERSATION ON NEW-YORK POLITICS—IT SUGGESTS A FORTUNATE IDEA—THE MEETING WITH BASS—THE SECRET OUT—LEGAL PROCEEDINGS INSTITUTED—DEPARTURE OF NORTHUP AND THE SHERIFF FROM MARKSVILLE FOR BAYOU BŒUF—ARRANGEMENTS ON THE WAY—REACH EPPS' PLANTATION—DISCOVER HIS SLAVES IN THE COTTON FIELD—THE MEETING—THE FAREWELL.

ARRIVAL IN NEW-ORLEANS—GLIMPSE OF FREEMAN—GENOIS, THE RECORDER—HIS DESCRIPTION OF SOLOMON—REACH CHARLESTON—INTERRUPTED BY CUSTOM HOUSE OFFICERS—PASS THROUGH RICHMOND—ARRIVAL IN WASHINGTON—BURCH ARRESTED—SHEKELS AND THORN—THEIR TESTIMONY—BURCH ACQUITTED—ARREST OF SOLOMON—BURCH WITHDRAWS THE COMPLAINT—THE HIGHER TRIBUNAL—DEPARTURE FROM WASHINGTON—ARRIVAL AT SANDY HILL—OLD FRIENDS AND FAMILIAR SCENES—PROCEED TO GLENS FALLS—MEETING WITH ANNE, MARGARET AND ELIZABETH—SOLOMON NORTHUP STAUNTON—INCIDENTS—CONCLUSION.

In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that resembles his own sub — Stan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayor’s office, a baby identifies corruption with her mere presence, marking the guilty with blemishes and boils. A seductive gold digger is soon tapped to combat forces beyond imagining.

Unbeknownst to them, they are all descended from the whimsical, capricious, wanton creatures known as the jinn, who live in a world separated from ours by a veil. Centuries ago, Dunia, a princess of the jinn, fell in love with a mortal man of reason. Together they produced an astonishing number of children, unaware of their fantastical powers, who spread across generations in the human world.

Once the line between worlds is breached on a grand scale, Dunia’s children and others will play a role in an epic war between light and dark spanning a thousand and one nights — or two years, eight months, and twenty-eight nights. It is a time of enormous upheaval, where beliefs are challenged, words act like poison, silence is a disease, and a noise may contain a hidden curse.

Once again, the finest short-form sf offerings of the year have been collected in a single volume. With Year's Best SF 17, acclaimed, award-winning editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer demonstrate the amazing depth and power of contemporary speculative fiction, showcasing astonishing stories from some of the genre's most respected names as well as exciting new writers to watch. Prepare to travel light years from the ordinary into a tomorrow at once breathtaking, frightening, and possible, with tales of wonder from: Elizabeth Bear

Gregory Benford

Neil Gaiman

Nancy Kress

Michael Swanwick

and others.

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