Diana Secker

Two centuries of great stories about man’s best friend—from Mark Twain and Anton Chekhov to Patricia Highsmith and Jonathan Lethem.

The pack of richly drawn and unforgettable canines gathered here includes Rudyard Kipling’s heroically faithful “Garm,” Bret Harte’s irrepressible scoundrel of a “Yellow Dog,” and the aggressively affectionate three-legged pit bull Ava, who lives in an apartment building for dogs in Jonathan Lethem’s “Ava’s Apartment.” Here are stories that touchingly illuminate the dog’s role in the emotional lives of humans: Amy Hempel’s masterful “The Dog of the Marriage” and Tobias Wolff’s “Her Dog,” in which a widower shares his grief for his wife with her grieving pet. Here too are inventively humorous portraits, from O. Henry’s tale of a coddled pet’s escape in “Memoirs of a Yellow Dog” to P. G. Wodehouse’s cheerfully na簿ve watchdog who simply wants everybody to get along. These writers and others—Rick Bass, Ray Bradbury, James Salter, Penelope Lively, and Lydia Millet among them—offer a kaleidoscopic take on humanity’s most devoted companion.