Kathleen Alcott

"Edith is a widowed landlady who rents apartments in her Brooklyn brownstone to an unlikely collection of humans, all deeply in need of shelter. Crippled in various ways--in spirit, in mind, in body, in heart--the renters struggle to navigate daily existence, and soon come to realize that Edith's deteriorating mind, and the menacing presence of her estranged, unscrupulous son, Owen, is the greatest challenge they must confront together." --

"Two brothers, James and Jackson, have conversations in their sleep and their sister Ida listens in. While the world outside saw them as neighbors and friends, to each other the three formed a family unit--two brothers and a sister--not drawn from blood, but drawn from a deep need to fill a void in their single-parent households. Theirs is a relationship of communication without speaking, of understanding without judgment, of intimacy without rules...

Anthony Doerr and series editor, Heidi Pitlor, select twenty stories that represent the best examples of the form published in 2018.