The eleven beautifully crafted stories in Bad Kansas reveal the complicated underbelly of the country's most flown-over state and the quirky characters that call it home. In this darkly humorous collection, Kansas becomes a state of mind as Mandelbaum's characters struggle to define their relationship to home and what it means to stay or leave, to hold on or let go. When a desperate woman finds herself on a date with a rugged man she has nothing in common with, she must decide whether to sacrifice the life of a bear in order to keep the man's affection. After having a nightmare about a mallard, a young man wakes to discover he's choking the woman he loves. When his mother starts dating a slimy pizza parlor owner, a young boy must choose whether to align with his mischievous older brother or remain loyal to his mom. The deeply appealing and peculiar characters in Bad Kansas are determined to get what they want, be it love or sex or power, in a world intent on denying them.

Here are stories about fathers and sons, stories about men and women, and stories about the relationships between men by one of our most gifted story writers. The narrator of "The Who, the What and the Why," begins breaking into his own house as a sort of therapy after his daughter dies. In "The Human Use of Inhuman Beings," the main character realizes that his closest relationship is to an angel, who appears to him only to announce the death of loved ones. All Things, All at Once reminds us why Lee K. Abbott is to be treasured: his perfect pitch for tales of hapless Southwesterners, his way with sympathetic irony, his eye that skillfully notes the awkward humiliations common heartbreak, fractured families and records it all in lyrical, affectionate language. In tales new and from previous collections Abbott examines lived life and the lies we necessarily tell about it."

Why do accomplished writers (and grown-ups) like Ron Carlson, Rick Bass, and Michael Chabon (to name but a few of those represented here) still obsess over their baseball days? What is it about this green game of suspense that not only moves us but can also move us to flights of lyrical writing? In "Scoring from Second: Writers on Baseball" some of the literary lights of our day answer these questions with essays, reminiscences, and meditations on the sport that is America's game but also a deeply personal experience for player, observer, and fan alike. Here writers as different as Andre Dubus and Leslie Epstein, Chabon and Floyd Skloot, Michael Martone and William Least Heat-Moon reflect on the game they grew up with, the players who thrilled them, and the lessons that baseball holds for us all. From the one-season wonder to the long-haul heroes to the hall of fame, the game that has framed so many American summers--and lives--comes to quirky, instructive, and always entertaining life in these pages.

The stories in Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum's new collection are about finding resilience in the face of adversity. Following losses big and small, environmental and familial, universal and personal, the best of us try to recover and rebuild. Lunstrum asks: How do we keep going in the face of grief or disappointment when love fails or disaster strikes? How do we maintain the stamina to carry on in an uncertain world? The characters in her stories are living these questions and learning to reconstruct themselves, their families, and their futures from the wreckage of their broken pasts.

Praise for the Best of the Web series:

"Such a development could not have come at a better time for online literary publishing."--"NewPages"

"The book is heartily significant, featuring work that is sometimes surprising . . . and sometimes exhilarating--not unlike the Web itself."--"Los Angeles Times"

"The book, which canvasses both fiction and poetry, really cooks . . . in the melding of the two genres. . . . The Internet is built for this work: short and weird, just what one's attention span wants when clicking through. And Almond and Leslie wisely pick up on that, making the book worth paging through, as well."--"Time Out Chicago"

"Though publishing online provides us the opportunity to present fiction free from economic imperative, permitting us, our authors, and our readers to relish in the experiment of expression, one of our great regrets is forgoing the sensation of binding it, printing it, holding the work we proudly select in our hands. Then along comes Dzanc Books, and this gift of a book, Best of the Web, that feels, to us, like the presentation of an award."--Aaron Petrovich and Alex Rose, editors, Hotel St. George Press

This "Best of the Web" anthology is the first comprehensive print anthology to represent the vast array of contemporary online literature on an annual basis, bringing the world of web journals to a greater audience.

In Best of the Web 2009

Waqar Ahmed, Arlene Ang, Michael Baker, Marcelo Ballve, Marge Barrett,
Carmelinda Blagg, Benjamin Buchholz, Blake Butler, Jimmy Chen, Amy L .
Clark, Amber Cook, Bill Cook, Michael Czyzniejewski, Darlin' Neal, Matthew
Derby, Ryan Dilbert, Stephen Dixon, Alex Dumont, Claudia Emerson, D.A.
Feinfeld, Marcela Fuentes, M. Thomas Gammarino, Cassandra Garbus, Molly
Gaudr y, Anne Germanacos, Matt Getty, Todd Hasak-Lowy, Karen Heuler, Ash
Hibbert, Philip Holden, Roy Kesey, Hari Bhajan Khalsa, Tricia Louvar, Peter
Markus, Michael Martone, Heather Killelea McEntarfer, Lindsay Merbaum,
Corey Mesler, Laura Mullen, Joseph Olschner, Jeff Parker, Elise Paschen,
Elizabeth Penrose, Kate Petersen, Glen Pourciau, Sam Rasnake, Jonathan
Rice, Tom Sheehan, Claudia Smith, Lynn Strongin, Terese Svoboda, Jon
Thompson, Davide Trame, Donna D. Vitucci, Helen Wickes, Kathrine Leone
Wright, Jordan Zinovich, as well as introductions from series editor Nathan
Leslie and edition editor Lee K. Abbot, and interviews with select authors.