“The best that science fiction has to offer, chosen by the most respected editor in the field...a copy belongs of the shelf of every [science fiction] reader.”—George R.R. Martin, bestselling author of Game Of Thrones

"Veteran editor Dozois, 15-time Hugo winner, offers 30 stories, several of them Hugo-nominated. The table of contents is dominated by familiar names like Michael Swanwick and Greg Egan, but occasionally leavened with relative newcomers like Hannu Rajaniemi and more obscure authors like James Alan Gardner. Settings range from the present-day (Nancy Kress's 'The Erdmann Nexus') to the distant future (Ian McDonald's 'The Tear') and alternate history (Aliete de Bodard's 'Butterfly, Falling at Dawn'). Similarly the moods range from relatively upbeat (Dominic Green's 'Shining Armour') to pessimistic (Swanwick's 'From Babel's Fallen Glory We Fled') . . . Dozois also provides short biographies, a detailed overview of the year in SF and a lengthy list of honorable mentions. This is a worthy addition to a venerable series."—Publishers Weekly

“Gardner Dozois’s long-running ‘best of’ series is rightly a favorite . . . Mr. Dozois picks fiction that deserves to be better known to a wide audience.”—The Wall Street Journal

“In this hard-hitting but honest appraisal, America’s cultural skeptic Barbara Ehrenreich turns her focus on the muddled American phenomenon of positive thinking. She exposes the pseudoscience and pseudointellectual foundation of the positive-thinking movement for what it is: a house of cards. This is a mind-opening read.”—Michael Shermer, author of Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time

"Deborah Eisenberg offers commanding proof that in the right hands, the short story can be a legitimate art form, not just a test run for writers warming up to write a novel . . . There aren't many contemporary novels as shudderingly intimate and mordantly funny as Eisenberg's best stories, and her latest collection, her fifth in 20 years, should finally establish her as one of the most important fiction writers now at work . . . Eisenberg has given is these remarkable stories, machines of perfect revelation deftly constructed by a contemporary master."—Ben Marcus, The New York Times Book Review

"Deborah Eisenberg writes with a playwright's quick, bristling ear for dialogue and a painter's affection for nuance and image . . . Miss Eisenberg has found words to capture all the fleeting, ambivalent emotions of daily experience . . . and she's turned those elusive feelings into shimmering stories that possess the power to charm and to move us."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"If you're the type of reader who always wants to know what to expect, Stephen Elliott isn't your guy. But if you can take your literary sharp turns without hitting the brakes—or knowing exactly where you'll end up—you won't find a more provocative, masterful, thrilling ride than this."—Meredith Maran, San Francisco Chronicle

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"A towering achievement . . . A story that manages to be both illuminating and transcendent . . . [Eugenides] has emerged as the great American writer many of us suspected him of being."—Jeff Turrentine, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"The strong chapters are impossibly articulate and true. And like the born novelist that he is, Franzen keeps operating under the sign of ambivalence. We get both battling personas in The Discomfort Zone: the ironic Easterner and the upright Midwesterner. Long may they prosper!"—James Marcus, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[A] sterling collection of short stories, 38 in all, by the South African novelist. Gordimer has been writing for more than 60 years now, but her concerns have been constant: race, justice, the South African land. In a typical story, the landscape is austere, tough and unforgiving, just the sort of thing to bring out the best in a few hardy people, but calculated to wear down the spirits of most others . . . Some of the stories clearly date to the early days of resistance to apartheid, politically charged and with passing references to the first stirrings of the African National Congress; others take place in the thick of the battle for justice, amid 'beer-serious conversations about the possibility of the end of the world.' Four of the stories are new, an added pleasure for admirers of Gordimer's work. A welcome collection by a master of English prose—lucid and precisely written, if often bringing news only of disappointment, fear and loss."—Kirkus Reviews

"To say that The Forever War is the best science fiction war novel ever written is to damn it with faint praise. It is, for all its techno-extrapolative brilliance, as fine and woundingly genuine a war story as any I've read."—William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, Spook Country

“Handke became the enfant terrible of the European avant-garde, denouncing all social, psychological and historical categories of experience as species of linguistic fraud. But [he] has aged well and now…is regarded as one of the most important writers in German.” —Richard Locke, The New York Times

“Timothy Henderson has a gift for writing history. The individuals, the battles, and the results remain the same, but his narrative has a fresh, exciting quality. His engrossing history will hold the attention of undergraduate students and grizzled experts. He has written the best short history available.”—William H. Beezley, Professor of History, University of Arizona

"With this book, Hensley, an Inuit who has spent much of his life advocating on behalf of the Iñupiaq, offers both a rich and engrossing narrative of his own life and a valuable resource in the effort to understand and protect the culture and history of Alaska Natives . . . Remembering his childhood, Hensley writes simply but in vivid detail of the hardships of daily life as well as of his deep love of family and traditional culture . . . From an early age, Hensley recognized the conscious efforts of educators and missionaries to 'isolate children from their cultures.' He carried this sense of injustice with him when he left Alaska to pursue his education in the Lower 48 and ultimately became an indefatigable champion of native rights . . . Hensley continues his efforts to preserve and protect his native culture with this deeply respectful and clear-eyed book . . . truly a window into the real Alaska."—Debra Ginsberg, Shelf Awareness

"Like Smilla's Sense of Snow, The Quiet Girl spins a labyrinthine plot, sometimes looping into the past to fill in context as scenes unfold. This time around, though, Mr. Høeg adds a theological theme. In The Quiet Girl, Krone wants nothing less than to hear the sound of God. The novel teems with flashbacks, philosophical asides, ironical observations, theological musing, gripping scenes and events (the setting is again Denmark), and a sort of magic realism that elevates to celestial heights the uncanny human capacity to hear . . . [The Quiet Girl] takes it serious themes seriously, as many novels do not, and, with its busy plot, it never loses a thriller's sense of go."—Diane Scharper, The Wall Street Journal

"Hustvedt's descriptions of the immigrant experience and the Minnesota landscape have a spare Scandinavian elegance, while her account of the life of a Brooklyn psychoanalyst feels quietly authentic. She takes unapologetic delight in intellectual characters who understand their lives through far-ranging reading and lively conversation . . . she proves herself a writer deftly able to weave intricate ideas into an intriguing plot."—Sylvia Brownrigg, The New York Times