
The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021
The Best American Series
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About this listen
Steph Cha, a rising star who brings a fresh perspective as series editor, takes the helm of the new The Best American Mystery and Suspense, with best-selling crime novelist Alafair Burke joining her as the first guest editor.
“Crime writers, forgive the pun, are killing it right now creatively,” writes guest editor Alafair Burke in her introduction. “It was difficult - painful even - to narrow this year’s Best American Mystery and Suspense to only 20 stories.” Spanning from a mediocre spa in Florida, to New York’s gritty East Village, to death row in Alabama, this collection reveals boundless suspense in small, quiet moments, offering startling twists in the least likely of places. From a powerful response to hateful bullying, to a fight for health care, to a gripping desperation to vote, these stories are equal parts shocking, devastating, and enthralling, revealing the tension pulsing through our everyday lives and affirming that mystery and suspense writing is better than ever before.
The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021 includes:
Jenny Bhatt • Gar Anthony Haywood • Gabino Iglesias • Aya de Léon • Laura Lippman • Delia C. Pitts • Alex Segura • Faye Snowden • Lina Under, and others
Performed by Jennifer Sun Bell, Catherine Ho, Erin Bennett, Betsy Foldes-Meiman, Maxwell Hamilton, Dan Woren, Priya Ayyar, Kevin R. Free, Soneela Nankani, Natalie Del Reigo, Michael Crouch, Machelle Williams, Gustavo Rex, Jonathan Davis, Graham Halstead, Bahni Turpin, Khristine Hvam, Ryan Vincent Anderson, Robert Fass, Ramon De Ocampo
©2021 by HarperCollins Publishers LLC (P)2021 by HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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#1 New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Anthony Doerr brings his“stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. Doerr and the series editor, Heidi Pitlor, winnow down twenty stories out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.
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Another great year of Shorts
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The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022
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Lee Child selects the 20 best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Stephen King, Sara Paretsky, and many more. Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international best seller Lee Child has selected the 20 most suspenseful, most confounding, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.
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Very disappointing collection.
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Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller and MWA Grandmaster Sara Paretsky has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.
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Some excellent, many were rejected and most just unfinished.
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Too dark for my taste
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Wonderful narration. Mediocre stories.
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#1 New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Anthony Doerr brings his“stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) to selecting The Best American Short Stories 2019. Doerr and the series editor, Heidi Pitlor, winnow down twenty stories out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.
-
-
Another great year of Shorts
- By Michael on 01-19-24
By: Anthony Doerr, and others
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The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022
- By: Jess Walter - editor, Steph Cha - series editor
- Narrated by: Desean Terry, Lindsey Dorcus, Max Meyers, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A collection of the year’s best mystery and suspense short fiction selected by #1 New York Times bestselling author and guest editor Jess Walter and series editor Steph Cha.
By: Jess Walter - editor, and others
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The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2021
- By: Lee Child - editor and introduction, Otto Penzler - series editor
- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey, Emily Sutton-Smith
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
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Overall
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Lee Child selects the 20 best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Stephen King, Sara Paretsky, and many more. Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international best seller Lee Child has selected the 20 most suspenseful, most confounding, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.
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Very disappointing collection.
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By: Lee Child - editor and introduction, and others
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The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2022
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller and MWA Grandmaster Sara Paretsky has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.
-
-
Some excellent, many were rejected and most just unfinished.
- By Dr Rick on 11-23-24
By: Sara Paretsky - editor and introduction, and others
-
The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story
- By: John Freeman - editor
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett, Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the past 50 years, the American short story has changed dramatically. New voices, forms, and mixtures of genres have brought this unique US genre a thrilling burst of energy. This rich anthology celebrates this avalanche of talent. Beginning in 1970, it culls together a half century of powerful American short stories from all genres, including - for the first time in a literary anthology - science fiction, horror, and fantasy.
-
-
Too dark for my taste
- By Lazy Chicken on 10-03-22
-
Ghost Stories: Stephen Fry's Definitive Collection
- By: Stephen Fry, Washington Irving, M.R. James, and others
- Narrated by: Stephen Fry
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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Wonderful narration. Mediocre stories.
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Virgins
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On a perfect June day, Vivian Howe, author of 13 beach novels and mother of three nearly grown children, is killed in a hit-and-run car accident while jogging near her home on Nantucket. She ascends to the Beyond where she's assigned to a Person named Martha, who allows Vivi to watch what happens below for one last summer. Vivi also is granted three “nudges” to change the outcome of events on earth.
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Good read!
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Crime & Mystery Short Stories: An Anthology of Short-Read Thrillers and Who-Done-It Mysteries
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Be ready for some action, humor, and mystery in this anthology with short stories. You’ll listen about gangsters, witches, magic potions, interrogations, werewolves, and murder. Several stories have a murder victim, while others are all about theft or robberies. But in many cases, they spark the imagination and make up for a great way to sit back, relax, and read or listen to stories from a completely different world.
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Classic mysteries
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Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Volume I
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A star-studded cast of readers present unabridged tales of horror and suspense from Stephen King's classic best-selling short story collection.
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Great short stories!!
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By: Stephen King
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When a Stranger Comes to Town
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- Narrated by: Cindy Kay, Janina Edwards, Fajer Al-Kaisi, and others
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It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.
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The narrators are outstanding here.
- By Jennifer Baratta She/Her on 05-16-21
By: Michael Koryta
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Lone Stars
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- Unabridged
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Lone Stars follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they're gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower's immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama's second term.
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Read for bookclub but fell in Love
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By: Justin Deabler
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The Very Best of the Best
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- By: Gardner Dozois - editor
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- Length: 39 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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For decades, The Year's Best Science Fiction has been the most widely read short science fiction anthology of its kind. Now, after 35 annual collections comes the ultimate in science fiction anthologies. In The Very Best of the Best, legendary editor Gardner Dozois selects the finest short stories for this landmark collection, including short fiction from authors such as Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan, and any many more.
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Would be amazing if not for spoiler prefaces
- By Amazon Customer on 08-28-19
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Crime Hits Home
- By: S.J. Rozan
- Narrated by: Marni Penning, Cindy Kay, Charles Constant, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone comes from someplace. Everyone has somewhere they feel safe. Some people have found their home and are content where they are. Others feel trapped and yearn to go somewhere else. Many are somewhere else and yearn to go back. But even in these safest of places, sometimes…crime hits home. What happens then?
By: S.J. Rozan
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Skeleton Crew
- By: Stephen King
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- Length: 22 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The master at his scarifying best! From heart-pounding terror to the eeriest of whimsy - tales from the outer limits of one of the greatest imaginations of our time! Trucks that punish and beautiful teen demons who seduce a young man to massacre; curses whose malevolence grows through the years; obscene presences and angels of grace - here, indeed, is a night-blooming bouquet of chills and thrills.
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Excellent narrators for classic King collection
- By Sheryl McCallister on 04-07-20
By: Stephen King
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Deadly Anniversaries
- A Collection of Stories from Crime Fiction's Top Authors
- By: Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay, Emily Woo Zeller, Billie Fulford-Brown, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Mystery Writers of America is proud to present Deadly Anniversaries, a collection of crime and mystery stories from some of the best contemporary authors, all of whom have been invited to put their own unique spin on what it means to recognize a certain day or event every year. An anniversary can take many forms, and by the time this group of best sellers and award winners is through, none of us will ever look at anniversaries the same way again. Edited by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini, this collection features original stories from 20 industry giants.
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Thank you narrators for telling us these stories.
- By Jennifer Baratta She/Her on 09-13-23
By: Marcia Muller, and others
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Hearts in Atlantis
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Stephen King, William Hurt
- Length: 20 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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All the stories in this collection from Stephen King are related to the Vietnam War. King fans will recognize echoes of The Dark Tower series in the collection's first story, "Low Men in Yellow Coats." As the characters develop over the next four stories, King's version of the Vietnam War becomes one of his most frightening tales ever.
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Touching, Funny - Amazingly well written and read.
- By Kindle Customer on 01-15-03
By: Stephen King
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Everything's Eventual
- 14 Dark Tales
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Becky Ann Baker, John Cullum, Boyd Gaines, and others
- Length: 17 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The first collection of stories Stephen King has published since Nightmares & Dreamscapes nine years ago, Everything's Eventual includes one O. Henry Prize winner, two other award winners, four stories published by The New Yorker, and "Riding the Bullet", King's original e-book, which attracted over half a million online readers and became the most famous short story of the decade. Intense, eerie, and instantly compelling, they announce the stunningly fertile imagination of perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time.
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This is a vehicle for listening. We don’t need music
- By J-me on 07-31-19
By: Stephen King
What listeners say about The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-22-22
Waste of time
NO mystery, NO suspense. I could only stomach the first six, and if they were the editors idea of good stories, I couldn’t believe what was coming would be any better.
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- Todd
- 01-31-22
Openly biased
Some weak stories. Rather than a guarantee of a diverse field of authors how about picking the best stories no matter who wrote them. Who cares about the sex or color or any other label someone might place on an author. You advertise the best stories so give them to us.
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- Big Foot
- 01-04-22
Sadly I was not disappointed
with what is happening in society and in literature specifically I was afraid this was going to be an anthology of mostly woke propaganda and unfortunately I was very right
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