The Best American Short Stories 2020
The Best American Series
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About this listen
“To read their stories felt to me the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time,” recalls Curtis Sittenfeld of her initial encounter with the Best American Short Stories series. “They were windows into emotions I had and hadn’t had, into other settings and circumstances and observations and relationships.” Decades later, Sittenfeld was met by the same feeling selecting the stories for this year’s edition. The result is a striking and nuanced collection, bringing to life awkward college students, disgraced public figures, raunchy grandparents, and mystical godmothers. To listen to these stories is to experience the transporting joys of discovery and affirmation and to realize that story writing in America continues to flourish.
The Best American Short Stories 2020 includes:
- T. C. Boyle
- Emma Cline
- Mary Gaitskill
- Andrea Lee
- Elizabeth Mc Cracken
- Alejandro Puyana William Pei Shih
- Kevin Wilson
- And others
Full narrators list: Robert Petkoff, Soneela Nankani, Peter Ganim, Curtis Sittenfeld, Kevin T. Collins, Therese Plummer, Robin Miles, Gabra Zackman, Emily Woo Zeller, Tracey Leigh, Priya Ayyar, Rebecca Lowman, Ilyana Kadushin, Suzanne Toren, Cindy Kay, Ramon De Ocampo, Michael Crouch
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- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s been 17 years since the tragic summer the McAvoy sisters fell apart. Lindy, the wild one, left home, carved out a new life in the city, and never looked back. Delia, the sister who stayed, became a mother herself, raising her daughters and running the family shop in their small Ohio hometown on the shores of Lake Erie. But now, with their mother’s ailing health and a rebellious teenager to rein in, Delia has no choice but to welcome Lindy home.
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Great story
- By Nessa on 09-25-23
By: Molly Fader
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Lone Stars
- By: Justin Deabler
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.
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Read for bookclub but fell in Love
- By Ericka Lawson on 09-11-22
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Embassy Wife
- A Novel
- By: Katie Crouch
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- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
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Persephone Wilder, a displaced genius posing as the wife of an American diplomat in Namibia, takes her job as a representative of her country seriously and comes up with an intricate set of rules to survive a range of problems: how to dress in hundred-degree weather without showing too much skin, how not to look drunk at embassy functions, and how to eat roasted oryx with grace. She also suspects her husband is not actually the ambassador’s general counsel but instead a secret agent in the CIA. She takes the new trailing spouse, Amanda Evans, under her wing....
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Have narrator re-record this book
- By Amazon Customer on 09-30-21
By: Katie Crouch
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What listeners say about The Best American Short Stories 2020
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael
- 02-25-24
Another Great Year of Shorts
I have been reading this series since the 1980s and look forward to the new volume each year.
Although there are only a few GREAT stories in each volume, I have found this series has the best curation of any of the annual short story collections I read. Each volume has 20 of the best American short stories of the year. Audible now has all the volumes since 2019.
RANT: This is a curated collection of American shorts. It is not really a “Best” collection because diversity and inclusion appear to be an important editorial factor. Inclusive curated collections are great but are a different thing from a true “best of” collection.
This year I really liked Howl Palace, The Apartment, and This is Pleasure. There are six other very good stories along with a dozen or so ranging from OK to Good.
The narration varies but overall good to excellent.
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- West Hansen
- 01-07-21
This is Pleasure
Really nice selection, though a few required my brain, hungry for relaxation, to work more than I appreciated. I particularly enjoyed and
was provoked by Mary Gaiteskills “This is Pleasure “.
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9 people found this helpful
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- James W. Kelly
- 10-17-21
Avid reader
Way too much about sex. A few of the stores were really good but there must be more to write about than gratuitous sex.
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1 person found this helpful
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- dragyn 2
- 12-15-21
Horrible. Both me and my wife tried
Need to get a new editor and speaker. I’m sorry to feel this way about it, but if I could ask for my money back I would. This is actually the most I’ve ever been disappointed in audible even though it’s not their fault.
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