Introduction - Jackson R. Bryer
"The Fourth Alarm" by John Cheever - Lee K. Abbott
"A Father's Story" by Andre Dubus - Elliot Ackerman
"Use of Force" by William Carlos Williams - Julia Alvarez
"Leaving the Colonel" by Molly Giles - Rilla Askew
"A Cautionary Tale" by Deborah Eisenberg - Andrea Barrett
"The Wounded Soldier" by George Garrett - Richard Bausch
"Consolation" by Richard Bausch - Ann Beattie
"Where Is the Voice Coming From?" by Eudora Welty - Doris Betts
"How Can I Tell You?" by John O'Hara - Frederick Busch
"Triumph Over the Grave" by Denis Johnson - Maud Casey
"No One's a Mystery" by Elizabeth Tallent - Alan Cheuse
"Who Is It Can Tell Me Who I Am?" by Gina Berriault - Kate Christensen
"Cathedral" by Raymond Carver - Susan Coll
"The Magic Barrel" by Bernard Malamud - Nicholas Delbanco
"Dare's Gift" by Ellen Glasgow - R. H. W. Dillard
"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien - Ellen Douglas
"In Another Country" by Ernest Hemingway - Andre Dubus
"Like Life" by Lorrie Moore - Pamela Erens
"Ghost and Flesh, Water and Dirt" by William Goyen - George Garrett
"The Tree of Knowledge" by Henry James - William H. Gass
"Sur" by Ursula Le Guin - Molly Giles
"FRAGO" by Phil Klay - Julia Glass
"My Father Sits in the Dark" by Jerome Weidman - Herbert Gold
"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Anne Porter - Jack Greer
"The Bridegroom's Body" by Kay Boyle - Doris Grumbach
"The Doorbell" by Vladimir Nabokov - Olga Grushin
"Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor - A. R. Gurney
"Jubilee" by Kirstin Valdez Quade - Jane Hamilton
"Winter Dreams" by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Edmund Keeley
"In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" by Delmore Schwartz - Joyce Kornblatt
"Goodbye and Good Luck" by Grace Paley - Beverly Lowry
"Flight" by John Updike - Jill McCorkle
"A Silver Dish" by Saul Bellow - Alice McDermott
"Flying Home" by Ralph Ellison - Clarence Major
"Blessed Assurance" by Langston Hughes - Edward Kelsey Moore
"Big Black Good Man" by Richard Wright - Sabina Murray
"Travelin Man" by Peter Matthiessen - Howard Norman
"Pet Milk" by Stuart Dybek - Leslie Pietrzyk
"The Pedersen Kid" by William H. Gass - E. Annie Proulx
"Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville - Joanna Scott
"Old Boys, Old Girls" by Edward P. Jones - Rion Amilcar Scott
"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" by James Thurber - Mary Lee Settle
"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin - Joan Silber
"The Laughing Man" by J. D. Salinger - Elizabeth Spencer
"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid - Diana Wagman
"Fatherland: A Short Story" by Viet Thanh Nguyen - Kao Kalia Yang
"The Pura Principle" by Junot Diaz - Mako Yoshikawa
"Honeydew" by Edith Pearlman - Mary Kay Zuravleff