She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash.As her family, friends, and classmates, deep in grief, joined to create a memorial service for Marina, her unforgettable last essay for the Yale Daily News, “The Opposite of Loneliness,” went viral, receiving more than 1.4 million hits. She had struck a chord.Even though she was just twenty-two when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. The Opposite of Loneliness is an assem­blage of Marina’s essays and stories that, like The Last Lecture, articulates the universal struggle that all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to make an impact on the world.

    The collection boasts great variety from "famous to first-timers, sifted from major magazines and little reviews, grand and little worlds" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), ensuring yet another rewarding, eduring edition of the oldest and best-selling Best American.The idiot President / Daniel Alarcón --Yurt / Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum --Rubiaux rising / Steve de Jarnatt --Beyond the pale / Joseph Epstein --A shadow table / Alice Fulton --NowTrends / Karl Taro Greenfeld --The farms / Eleanor Henderson --Sagittarius / Greg Hrbek --Hurricanes anonymous / Adam Johnson --The anniversary trip / Victoria Lancelotta --A man like him / Yiyun Li --The briefcase / Rebecca Makkai --Magic words / Jill McCorkle --One dog year / Kevin Moffett --Modulation / Richard Powers --Them old cowboy songs / Annie Proulx --Into the gorge / Ron Rash --Ostracon / Alex Rose --The peripatetic coffin / Ethan Rutherford --Muzungu / Namwali Serpell --Contributors' notes --100 other distinguished stories of 2008 --Editorial addresses of American and Canadian magazines publishing short stories

    But do we know exactly what this book is? We do not. The original purpose of the collection was to introduce younger readers--high school and college-age people, more or less--to good writing from contemporary writers. But then the book came out and we discovered that the readership was not what we'd expected. Sure, there were some high school and college readers, but there were also older readers, and younger readers, and readers from every walk of life--police officers, firefighters, animal control experts, air-conditioning repair technicians, and prisoners. It runs the gamut. Now, your questions answered: What is the purpose of this book? --Dominique, Santa Monica, CA Thank you for your question, Dominique. (Such a lovely name!) The purpose of this book is to collect good work of any kind--fiction, humor, essays, comics, journalism--in one place, for the English-reading consumer. The other books in the Best American series are limited by their categories, most particularly the popular but constraining Best American Catholic Badger Mystery Writing. This collection is not so limited, which is why, we think, it dominates all similar collections, making them whimper and cower in a way that is shameful. Why aren't there more pieces about badgers? --Reginald, Myrtle Beach, SC We had plans to include at least seven pieces about badgers--their manufacture, appearance, and care--but were prevented from doing so by Zadie Smith. This was a condition of her inclusion in this volume. In addition to the pieces included in the collection, and Ms. Smith's introduction--or whatever it is--will there be a piece by the editor about a young man with a crush on a sixty-five-year-old woman whose lawn he cuts? --Peter and Nam Mee, Washington, DC We might have such a piece. It might be immediately following this sentence. (From the Foreword by Dave Eggers) 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, the very best pieces are selected by an editor who is widely recognized as a leading writer in his or her field, making the Best American series the most respected--and most popular--of its kind. Dave Eggers, who will be editing The Best American Nonrequired Reading annually, has once again chosen the best and least-expected fiction, nonfiction, satire, investigative reporting, alternative comics, and more from publications large, small, and on-line--The Onion, The New Yorker, Shout, Time, Zoetrope, Tin House, Nerve.com, and McSweeney's, to name just a few. Read on for "Some of the best literature you haven't been reading . . . And it's fantastic. All of it." (St. Petersburg Times). Lynda Barry Jonathan Safran Foer Lisa Gabriele Andrea Lee J. T. Leroy Nasdijj ZZ Packer David Sedaris

    

    . . . The overall effect is spellbinding."--The Washington Post Bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb is "a born storyteller" (Mary Higgins Clark) who astonishes readers and reviewers with the power and scope of her talent, prompting the San Diego Union-Tribune to declare: "There is no one quite like her among present-day writers. No one better, either."Foggy Mountain Breakdown, the first-ever collection of Sharyn McCrumb's short fiction, is a literary quilting of old and new, humorous and heartfelt, offering award-winning works--and two stories never before published, contrasting mountain childhoods past and present.Chilling tales of suspense alternate with evocative character portraits and compelling narratives that embrace the southern Appalachian locales and themes of McCrumb's acclaimed Ballad Novels. Within this cornucopia of two dozen stories, Old Rattler, a mountain healer, skirmishes with a serial killer . . . Princess Di investigates long-kept secrets within the House of Windsor . . . A reincarnated murder victim seeks delicious revenge . . . And while honeymooning in the bridegroom's ancestral hilltop homeplace, two newlyweds harbor second thoughts.The author's perfect-pitch ear for dialogue and ability to illuminate the dark side of human nature merge with her brilliant artistry to make Foggy Mountain Breakdown a virtuoso collection for devotees of Sharyn McCrumb--and for the legion of new readers who will find themselves caught under her spell.  From the Hardcover edition.

    "Bailey White's sketches evoke a sort of real-life Lake Wobegon."--The New York Times.

    Dick the greatest science fiction mind on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Dick's works has continued to mount, and his reputation has been further enhanced by a growing body of critical attention. The Philip K. Dick Award is now given annually to a distinguished work of science fiction, and the Philip K. Dick Society is devoted to the study and promulgation of his works.Dick won the prestigious Hugo Award for the best novel of 1963 for The Man in the High Castle. In the last year of his life, the film Blade Runner was made from his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ?This collection includes some of Dick's earliest short and medium-length fiction, including "We Can Remember it for You Wholesale" (the story that inspired the motion picture Total Recall), "Second Variety" (which inspired the motion picture Screamers), "Paychecks", "The Minority Report", and 21 more.Content: "Fair Game" (1959) "The Hanging Stranger" (1953) ""The Eyes Have It"" (1953) "The Golden Man" (1954) "The Turning Wheel" (1954) "The Last of the Masters" (1954) "The Father-Thing" (1954) "Strange Eden" (1954) "Tony and the Beetles" (1954) "Null-O" (1958) "To Serve the Master" (1956) "Exhibit Piece" (1954) "The Crawlers" (1954) "Sales Pitch" (1954) "Shell Game" (1954) "Upon the Dull Earth" (1954) "Foster, You're Dead!" (1955) "Pay for the Printer" (1956) "War Veteran" (1955) "The Chromium Fence" (1955) "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966) "The Minority Report" (1956) "Paycheck" (1953) "Second Variety" (1953)

    It is true that I am nervous. But why will you say that I am mad? In "The Cask of Amontillado," a man exacts revenge on a disloyal friend at carnival, luring him into catacombs below the city. In "The Masque of the Red Death," a prince shielding himself from plague hosts a doomed party inside his abbey stronghold. A prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, faced with a swinging blade and swarming rats, can t see his tormentors in "The Pit and the Pendulum," and in "The Tell-Tale Heart," a milky eye and a deafening heartbeat reveal the effects of conscience and creeping madness. Alongside these tales are visual interpretations of three poems "The Raven," "The Bells," and Poe s poignant elegy to lost love, "Annabel Lee." The seven concise graphic narratives, keyed to thematic icons, amplify and honor the timeless legacy of a master of gothic horror."

    Because a predator lies in wait. This compelling new collection from the editors of the bestselling Stalkers tells of worlds where evil waits and watches...and kills. Each story will send chills up your spine, keep you burning the lights all night, and have you looking over your shoulder—just in case the Predator is there. So lock your doors, check your windows, and get ready to savor fiction that touches the primeval places…where all your screams are born.

    D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis has defined Appalachia for much of the nation. What about Hillbilly Elegy accounts for this explosion of interest during this period of political turmoil? Why have its ideas raised so much controversy? And how can debates about the book catalyze new, more inclusive political agendas for the region’s future?Appalachian Reckoning is a retort, at turns rigorous, critical, angry, and hopeful, to the long shadow Hillbilly Elegy has cast over the region and its imagining. But it also moves beyond Hillbilly Elegy to allow Appalachians from varied backgrounds to tell their own diverse and complex stories through an imaginative blend of scholarship, prose, poetry, and photography. The essays and creative work collected in Appalachian Reckoning provide a deeply personal portrait of a place that is at once culturally rich and economically distressed, unique and typically American. Complicating simplistic visions that associate the region almost exclusively with death and decay, Appalachian Reckoning makes clear Appalachia’s intellectual vitality, spiritual richness, and progressive possibilities.

    This is an audio version of the short story "One Word Answer" that was originally published in the anthology "Bite" and was reprinted in "A Touch of Dead." It is set between books 5 & 6 of the Sookie Stackhouse series.__________Unabridged, 1 disc, 45 minutes