Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - The Best American Series: 14 Short Stories & Essays

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This Old Man by Roger Angell. First published in The New Yorker, February 17 and 24, 2014. Copyright 2014 by Roger Angell. Reprinted by permission of Roger Angell.

It Will Look Like a Sunset by Kelly Sundberg. First published in Guernica, April 1, 2014. Copyright 2014 by Kelly Sundberg. Reprinted by permission of Kelly Sundberg and Guernica.

The Adventure of the Laughing Fisherman by Jeffery Deaver. First published in In the Company of Sherlock Holmes. Copyright 2014 by Gunner Publications, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Jeffery Deaver, Manager.

Staircase to the Moon by Theresa E. Lehr. First published in Alfred Hitchcocks Mystery Magazine, September 2014. Copyright 2014 by Theresa E. Lehr. Reprinted by permission of Theresa E. Lehr.

The City and the Sea by Meera Subramanian. First published in Orion, March 2014. Copyright 2014 by Meera Subramanian. Reprinted by permission of Meera Subramanian.

One of a Kind by Seth Mnookin. First published in The New Yorker, July 21, 2014. Copyright 2014 by Seth Mnookin. Reprinted by permission of Seth Mnookin.

The Thing About Shapes to Come by Adam-Troy Castro. First published in Lightspeed Magazine, January 2014 (Issue 44). Copyright 2014 by Adam-Troy Castro. Reprinted by permission of Adam-Troy Castro.

How to Get Back to the Forest by Sofia Samatar. First published in Lightspeed Magazine, March 2014 (Issue 46). Copyright 2014 by Sofia Samatar. Reprinted by permission of Sofia Samatar.

Fingerprints by Justin Bigos. First published in McSweeneys Quarterly 47. Copyright 2014 by Justin Bigos. Reprinted by permission of the author.

M & L by Sarah Kokernot. First published in West Branch, no. 76. Copyright 2014 by Sarah Kokernot. Reprinted by permission of Sarah Kokernot.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Greg Maddux by Jeremy Collins. First published on SBNation.com. Copyright 2014 by Jeremy Collins. Reprinted by permission of Jeremy Collins.

The Rage of the Squat King by Rick Bass. First published in New Nowhere, vol. 1. Copyright 2014 by Rick Bass. Reprinted by permission of Rick Bass.

The Sound of Silence by Lisa Abend. First published in AFAR, February 2014. Copyright 2014 by Lisa Abend. Reprinted by permission of Afar Magazine and Lisa Abend.

Bonfire of the Humanities by Patrick Symmes. First published in Outside, May 2014. Copyright 2014 by Patrick Symmes. Reprinted by permission of Patrick Symmes.

Dear Reader,

The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the countrys finest short fiction and nonfiction. This special edition contains selections from the following editions:

The Best American Essays 2015

The Best American Mystery Stories 2015

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015

The Best American Short Stories 2015

The Best American Sports Writing 2015

The Best American Travel Writing 2015

Each volumes series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. The special guest editor then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respectedand most popularof its kind.

I hope you enjoy the brilliant writing presented within this special edition and I invite you to delve further into the individual works.

Ken Carpenter

VP, Director of Trade Paperbacks

Mariner Books

from

FROM The New Yorker

C HECK ME OUT . The top two knuckles of my left hand look as if Id been worked over by the KGB. No, its more as if Id been a catcher for the Hall of Fame pitcher Candy Cummings, the inventor of the curveball, who retired from the game in 1877. To put this another way, if I pointed that hand at you like a pistol and fired at your nose, the bullet would nail you in the left knee. Arthritis.

Now, still facing you, if I cover my left, or better, eye with one hand, what I see is a blurry encircling version of the ceiling and floor and walls or windows to our right and left but no sign of your face or head: nothing in the middle. But cheer up: if I reverse things and cover my right eye, there you are, back again. If I take my hand away and look at you with both eyes, the empty hole disappears and youre in 3-D, and actually looking pretty terrific today. Macular degeneration.

Im ninety-three, and Im feeling great. Well, pretty great, unless Ive forgotten to take a couple of Tylenols in the past four or five hours, in which case Ive begun to feel some jagged little pains shooting down my left forearm and into the base of the thumb. Shingles, in 1996, with resultant nerve damage.

Like many men and women my age, I get around with a couple of arterial stents that keep my heart chunking. I also sport a minute plastic seashell that clamps shut a congenital hole in my heart, discovered in my early eighties. The surgeon at Mass General who fixed up this PFO (a patent foramen ovaleI love to say it) was a Mexican-born character actor in beads and clogs, and a fervent admirer of Derek Jeter. Counting this procedure and the stents, plus a passing balloon angioplasty and two or three false alarms, Ive become sort of a table potato, unalarmed by the X-ray cameras swooping eerily about just above my naked body in a darkened and icy operating room; theres also a little TV screen up there that presents my heart as a pendant ragbag attached to tacky ribbons of veins and arteries. But never mind. Nowadays I pop a pink beta-blocker and a white statin at breakfast, along with several lesser pills, and head off to my human-wreckage gym, and its been a couple of years since the last showing.

My left knee is thicker but shakier than my right. I messed it up playing football, eons ago, but cant remember what went wrong there more recently. I had a date to have the joint replaced by a famous knee man (hes listed in the Metropolitan Opera program as a major supporter) but changed course at the last moment, opting elsewhere for injections of synthetic frog hair or rooster combs or something, which magically took away the pain. I walk around with a cane now when outdoorsStop brandishing! I hear my wife, Carol, admonishingwhich gives me a nice little edge when hailing cabs.