The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 - Softcover

The Best American Series

In her introduction, guest editor Laura Lippman notes that the mystery short story writer’s task is an exacting one—the result must be solid and satisfying, but also provide “the requisite twists and answers” and a “resolution that must never be too on-the-nose.” Showcasing writers who have honed this nuanced skill set, The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 offers tightly wound whodunits, puzzling perspectives, and disturbing denouements. There’s a bank-robbing former Marine, a young mother under suspicion after her child goes missing, a ruthless colonial timber baron, a high school principal with a past, and a host of other memorable characters in this collection “filled with mayhem and murder and darkness.”

The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 includes Megan Abbott, Daniel Alarcón, Russell Banks, James Lee Burke, Patricia Engel, Roxane Gay, Charlaine Harris, Joseph Heller, Annie Proulx, and others.

[INSERT AUTHOR PHOTO] LAURA LIPPMAN, editor, is the best-selling author of eleven novels featuring Baltimore private detective Tess Monaghan, eight standalone novels (most recently After I’m Gone), and a short story collection. She has won numerous literary prizes for her work, including the Edgar®, Anthony, Nero Wolfe, Agatha, Gumshoe, Barry, and Macavity Awards.

Otto Penzler, series editor, is a renowned mystery editor, publisher, and columnist, and the owner of New York's The Mysterious Bookshop, the oldest and largest bookstores dedicated solely to mystery fiction. He has edited more than fifty crime-fiction anthologies.