This collection of stories—twenty-one classics followed by ten potent new stories—displays Tobias Wolff's exquisite gifts over a quarter century.

The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself.
The agency of revelation is the school literary contest,...

The Barracks Thief is the story of three young paratroopers waiting to be shipped out to Vietnam. Brought together one sweltering afternoon to stand guard over an ammunition dump threatened by a forest fire, they discover in each other an unexpected capacity for recklessness and violence. Far from being alarmed by this discovery, they are exhilarated by it; they emerge from their common danger full of confidence in their own manhood and in the bond...

A story of siblings and faith from short-story master Tobias Wolff Frances has always been protective of her younger brother Frank. The children of a brutal father and a sick, defenseless mother, Frances fought to keep her brother safe. And throughout all of his adult failings-from drug addiction to near-fatal car crashes-she has stood by his side. Now Frank has found religion. Standing in his crisp white shirt and restrictive tie, he's eager to...

Three Americans drifting through post-war North Africa encounter the limits of human existence in the form of a land and a people utterly alien to them.

Ms. O'Brien read from the story "Brother" and from Down by the River on May 12, 1998.

"This memoir by Harry Crews captures the first six years of his life among impoverished tenant farmer families in rural southern Georgia. Crews shares details of farm life, his father's death, his friendship with the son of a Black hired hand; his bout with polio; his mother and stepfather's failing marriage; his near-fatal scalding at a hog-killing; and a five-month sojourn in Jacksonville, Florida. As an introduction to Crews's fiction, this portrait...

A new collection showcasing the best of Ernest Hemingway's short stories including his well-known classics, as featured in the magnificent three-part, six-hour PBS documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Ernest Hemingway is considered one of the greatest American writers. In the PBS documentary film Hemingway, by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, excerpts from his stories are used to highlight style elements and biographical events as his writing matured....