本书精心选取了26位作家的28部作品。所选的绝大多数作品都曾被评为北美的年度最佳。本书在选材时还是尽量注意避免落入俗套——既要突出每篇小说的代表性，又要避开已经成为文选“熟客”的那些篇章，还要力求所选材料在题材和主题方面的多样化。希望本书能够帮助读者更好的阅读国外小说作品，来提高英语阅读的能力。

The Fall of the House of Usher (Edgar Allan Poe) 

Rappaccini's Daughter (Nathaniel Hawthorne) 

The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) 

The Real Thing (Henry James) 

The Open Boat (Stephen Crane) 

Paul's Case (Willa Cather) 

To Builda Fire (Jack London) 

The Other Woman (Sherwood Anderson) 

Blood-Burning Moon (Jean Toomer) 

The Killers (Ernest Hemingway) 

That Evening Sun (William Faulkner) 

Babylon Revisited (F. Scott Fitzgerald) 

The Fig Tree (Katherine Anne Porter) 

The Leonardo (Vladimir Nabokov) 

"That in Aleppo Once..." (Vladimir Nabokov) 

Good Country People(Flannery O’Connor)

Defender of the Faith(Philip Roth)

Black Is My Favorite Color(Bernard Malamud)

The Swimmer(John Cheever)

Where Are You Going，Where Have You Been?(Joyce Carol Oates)

How I Contemplated the World(Joyce Carol Oates) 

Lost in the Funhouse(John Barth)

Everyday Use：for your grandmama(Alice Walker) 

The Ones Who WalkAway from Omelas(Ursula K．e Guin)

A Silver Dish(Saul Bellow)

WhatWeTalk aboutWhenWeTalk aboutLove(RaymondCarver)

Janus(Ann Beattie)

The Way We Live Now(Susan Sontag)

Appendix：Glossary of Literary Terms

Bibliography