This year's Best American Short Stories features a rich mix of voices, from both intriguing new writers and established masters of the form like Michael Chabon, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Ford, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Arthur Miller. The 2002 collection includes stories about everything from illicit love affairs to family, the immigrant experience and badly behaved children -- stories varied in subject but unified in their power and humanity. In the words of this year's guest editor, the best-selling author Sue Miller, "The American short story today [is] healthy and strong...These stories arrived in the nick of time...to teach me once more what we read fiction for."

Here are stories that are full of subtle wisdom and shimmering insights into love and loss -- stories that travel from history to the present, from childhood through old age, and that bring us characters as recognizable as they are appealing. Michael Chabon paints a revealing portrait of a father and son choosing a Halloween pumpkin. Carolyn Cooke brilliantly explores marriage and fidelity at a Brahmin cocktail party. Ann Cummins's haunting story tells of an unlikely friendship between two young girls, in breathtaking prose. Beth Lordan presents ninety years of history that underlie the lives of an Irish American couple. E. L. Doctorow brings us a memorable mother-son criminal team, and Jhumpa Lahiri describes with elegant understatement the complexities of being a roommate.

Contents:

• Along the Frontage Road by Michael Chabon
• The Sugar-Tit by Carolyn Cooke
• The Red Ant House by Ann Cummins
• Seven by Edwidge Danticat
• A House on the Plains by E. L. Doctorow
• Puppy by Richard Ford
• The Heifer by Melissa Hardy
• Zilkowski's Theorem by Karl Iagnemma
• Nobody's Business by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Digging by Beth Lordan
• In Case We're Separated by Alice Mattison
• Billy Goats by Jill McCorkle
• Watermelon Days by Tom McNeal
• Nachman from Los Angeles by Leonard Michaels
• Bulldog by Arthur Miller
• The Rug by Meg Mullins
• Family Furnishings by Alice Munro
• Surrounded by Sleep by Akhil Sharma
• Love and Hydrogen by Jim Shepard
• Aftermath by Mary Yukari Waters