This book is an exceptionally wide-ranging alphabetically arranged collection of stories spanning all genres of short fiction. It includes myth, fairy tale, humor, western, detective, Magic Realism, gothic, fantasy, folktale, and film. This edition presents a wide variety of selections by writers from diverse backgrounds that represent a true cross-section of the population and represent a broader, more current selection of contemporary fiction.Features a variety of relativelynew writers and some older writers whose work is gaining new audiences: T. C. Boyle, Alice Carey, Oscar Cesares, Charles Chetnutt, E. M Forster, Nikolai Leskov, Mary McCarthy, Jonathan Nolan, Dorothy Parker, Banana Yoshimoto, and Anzia Yezierska. Includesnew works to the context readings essays or excerpts from non-fiction section: by Walter Benjamin, Raymond Carver, E.M. Forester, and Joyce Carol Oates, all great critics and theorists of narrative.Stresses women writers, writers of color, and gay and lesbian writers:includes works by Isabel Allande, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Leslie Dick, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Mary Gaitskill, Susan Glaspell, Gish Jen, Mary Shelley, Leslie Marmon Silko, Susan Sontag, Jeanette Winterson, Sherman Alexie, Julio Cortaacute;zar, Carlos Fuentes, Ernest J. Gaines, Dagoberto Gilb, Hanif Kureishi, Tomaacute;s Rivera, Salman Rushdie and more.For literature and film enthusiasts.