This volume captures 20 of the best short stories from 13 American Catholic writers over the past 75 years. Spanning most of the 20th century, the stories in this collection deal with many of the issues brought into the spotlight with Vatican II.

The thirteen stories in this collection track strained lives, characters compressed by the crises of our times, from clerical misdeeds to school shootings. Never settling for easy exits, these intense fictions portray a world distrustful of its former guides but populated still by souls searching and finding.

Best-selling author Walter Mosley has selected the year's top fiction from voices well-known and new. Here several authors bring their stories to vivid life for a banner audio edition.

This volume offers a survey of American short fiction in 59 tales that combine classic works with 'different, unexpected gems', which invite readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Authors include: Amy Tan, Alice Adams, David Leavitt and Tim O'Brien.

"It is fast-moving and often downright funny."—New York Times "He has recaptured childish innocence and presented it with adult enlightenment—plus a touch of cynicism—yet never with irreverence." —Book-of-the-Month Club News First confession and its terrors. Eighty-four first graders in a classroom ruled by just one nun. The agony and the ecstasy of Lent. The dubious honor of being declared the worst altar server ever. Dinah Shore and the Blessed Virgin haunting your dreams. This is Eddie Ryan's world as he grows up in the intensely Catholic world of South-Side Chicago's St. Bastion's parish in the 1950s. In this classic coming-of-age novel, John Powers draws readers into Eddie Ryan's world with deep affection and bittersweet humor.

The incomparable John Updike selects the 55 finest short stories from America's bestselling anthology, published since 1915.

What do Buffalo Bill, John F. Kennedy, Ponce de Leon, Dorothy Day, Andy Warhol, and Al Capone have in common? They're all Catholics who have shaped America. In this page-a-day history, 365 entries offer inspiring stories celebrating the Catholic American experience. From famous figures to ordinary people, The American Catholic Almanac tells the facinating, funny, uplifting, and unlikely tales of Catholics' influence on American culture and politics. Spanning the scope of the Revolutionary War to Tom and Jerry cartoons to Notre Dame football, this unique devotional will appeal to anyone curious about how the Catholic faith has intersected with public life over the last three hundred years in America.