Rolling Nowhere

Thieves, liars, killers, and conspirators—it's a criminal world out there, and someone has got to write about it. An eclectic collection of the year's best reportage, The Best American Crime Reporting 2008 brings together the murderers and the master­minds, the mysteries and missteps that make for brilliant stories, told by the aces of the true-crime genre. This latest addition to the highly acclaimed series features guest editor Jonathan Kellerman, bestselling author of more than twenty crime novels, most recently Compulsion and the forthcoming Bones.

Now more than ever, Americans are troubled by questions. As sweaty modernity thrusts itself upon us, the veil of ignorance that cloaked our nation hangs in tatters, tattered tatters. Our "funny bones" are neither fun nor bony. Glum is the new giddy, and the old giddy wasn't too giddy to begin with.

What can be done to stop this relentless march of drabbery? Nothing. But perhaps this book can be used to dull the pain. Included herein:

The Ten Worst Films of All Time, as Reviewed by Ezra Pound over Italian Radio

Unused Audio Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer 2002, for The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring DVD (Platinum Series Extended Edition), Part One.

How Important Moments in My Life Would Have Been Different If I Was Shot in the Stomach

My Beard, Reviewed

Circumstances under Which I Would Have Sex with Some of My Fellow Jurors

Words That Would Make Nice Names for Babies, If It Weren't for Their Unsuitable Meanings

As a Porn Movie Titler, I May Lack Promise

Ineffective Ways to Subdue a Jaguar

Eleven Lunch Meats I Have Invented

Four Things I Would Have Said to Sylvia Plath if I Had Been Her Boyfriend

And much, much more, including 20 brilliant new lists . . .

We Live in Water, the first collection of short fiction from New York Times bestselling author Jess Walter, is a suite of diverse, often comic stories about personal struggle and diminished dreams, all of them marked by the wry wit and generosity of spirit that has made him one of our most talked-about writers. In "Thief," a blue-collar worker turns unlikely detective to find out which of his kids is stealing from the family vacation fund. In "We Live in Water," a lawyer returns to a corrupt North Idaho town to find the father who disappeared thirty years earlier. In "Anything Helps," a homeless man has to "go to cardboard" to raise enough money to buy his son the new Harry Potter book. In "Virgo," a local newspaper editor tries to get back at his superstitious ex-girlfriend by screwing with her horoscope. And the collection's final story transforms slyly from a portrait of Walter's hometown into a moving contemplation of our times.