New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2007

The 21st edition of Algonquin's signature anthology is not the series' strongest, but it's consistent and entertaining. Unlike some previous editions, the majority of the stories have something to do with the geographic South. Joshua Ferris's ""Ghost Town Choir,"" set in Florida's Big Coppitt Key, begins with a son's witnessing a single mother's breakup rage, and also shows off a writer's ability to violate most of the rules of short fiction by using dual points of view. The tabloids inform Holly Goddard Jones's ""Life Expectancy,"" which opens on a high school basketball coach's affair with a sophmore, and the haunting and horrifying portrait of a homicidal maniac in ""Beauty and Virtue"" by Augustín Maes is the strongest offering in the collection. Although it's the least overtly southern story in the book, Daniel Wallace's short vignette about marriage and perception of beauty is touching. The remainder, while always rewarding, tends to drift into stylistic showboating or to lack a deep connection to their backgrounds and settings. Nevertheless, editor Jones (All Aunt Hagar's Children, etc.) has brought a sharp eye to a venerable tradition, stewarded by series editor Kathy Pories.