Best known for his Oscar-nominated song "Miss Misery" from the Good Will Hunting soundtrack, Elliott Smith was catapulted to the status of indie rock star after performing at the 1997 Academy Awards. Some of his albums, XO and Either/Or among them, would become '90s classics, helping to define an understated aesthetic that owed as much to the melodic emphasis of The Beatles as it did to punk. In the afterglow of the success of "Miss Misery," Smith's fame grew--alongside his struggles with depression and substance abuse. First relocating to Brooklyn, and then finally to L.A., he fell into a downward spiral evident to friends and fans alike, even as he continued to write such beautifully...

"The literary 'Oscars' features twenty outstanding examples of the best of the best in American short stories." - Shelf Awareness for Readers The Best American Short Stories 2014 will be selected by national best-selling author Jennifer Egan, who won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction for A Visit from the Goon Squad, heralded by Time magazine as "a new classic of American fiction." Egan "possesses a satirist's eye and a romance novelist's heart" (New York Times Book Review).

At fifteen, Josh Paquette and Khadijah Silverglate-Dunn catch Josh's father and Khad ijah's mother kissing in a natural foods store. As both of their families fall apart, the teenagers sign a pact never to cheat on anyone, ever. They have no problem keeping the vow - until they meet again at twentyeight, both struggling with career and identit y, and both engaged to other people. Acclaimed author Benjamin Nugent's fiction debut is a hilarious, sad, handsomely plotted story of love and class. Stylistically adventurous but always accessible, Nugent trains a keen ear on the vernaculars of Generation Y and the baby boomers, as the young and middle-aged try to decide what parenting,...