From a Nigerian boy's friendship with his family's former houseboy to a sweatshop girl's experience as a sister-wife, from love and murder on the frontier to a meltdown in the academe, these 20 stories, for guest editor Junot Díaz, have the economy and power to "break hearts bones vanities and cages." Series editor Heidi Pitlor confides, "A great story has that power: it removes you from your life. It lifts you away for a while. Junot Díaz and I found much to discover this year." Here are works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mohammed Naseehu Ali, Andrea Barrett, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Ted Chiang, Louise Erdrich, Lauren Groff, Karen Russell, and John Edgar Wideman.