Showing results by narrator "Laura Copland" in Literature & Fiction

“Without stories, we cannot live well,” shares guest editor Min Jin Lee, describing how storytelling affects and nurtures readers. The Best American Short Stories 2023 features twenty pieces of short fiction that reflect a world full of fractured relationships, but also wondrous hope. A lifelong friendship may become a casualty of the Russia-Ukraine war. Rejected by his lover, a man seeks to reconcile with his family. Twitter users miraculously muster enough empathy to help a lost cat find a forever home.

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.

"Where has everyone gone?" That's the question 15-year-old Annabelle 'Birdy' Finch is asking. As a 100-year storm descends on Los Angeles, Birdy's not the only one looking for answers to the city's vanishing population. A wheelchair-bound Army veteran watches the world from his apartment window, and what he sees terrifies him. An LA detective has two missing patrol cops, a bloody crime scene, but no bodies. A desperate mother will stop at nothing in her search to find her missing daughter.

Catherine Grier seemed to have it all - money, prestige, and a beach house that would rival the Hamptons. But an old scar buried deep in her soul hides a life filled with loneliness and painful memories...until a dusty old book lands in her lap, sending her back in time to 1767 and into the arms of Lord Bryne Adair.

Death at Brier Hospital is routine and provides the perfect opportunity to murder and get away with it. Jacob Weizman, a physician, and his wife, Lola, a psychotherapist, are Holocaust survivors and need no proof of evil in this world. Jacob and Lola are unique protagonists. They're octogenarians who take the fear out of getting old. Their intelligence, competence, humor, and sense of history make them appealing in a world that too often disdains the aged.