The Editor's Choice IV

For readers without the time to page through the 18 magazines represented here, this anthology is an excellent selection of the year's short stories. Gail Galloway Adams describes a girl's crush on her charming brother-in-law, a bantamweight redneck with the ""Inside Dope.'' In Mary Gordon's ``The Dancing Party,'' a contemporary social roundelay is sketched with the jaunty rhythm and sad undertone of a Gershwin song. A young woman tries to make sense of her threatening, chaotic city in Amy Herrick's ``In the Air, Over Our Heads.'' Tim O'Brien takes us to Vietnam for his elegiac litany of foot soldiers and ``The Things They Carried.'' Also included: works by Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Thomas McGuane, Sue Miller and Elizabeth Tallent. (January)