248 pages.

Issue No. 103 kicks off our 30th anniversary year with a wealth of new works by the country’s finest contemporary authors.

Lydia Millet’s “The Island in the Porthole”: What plagues this stranded cruise ship: navigation gone awry or existential crisis?

Héctor Tobar’s “Secret Streams” (a Best American Short Stories 2016 selection): In Los Angeles, a winding path of water brings two loners together.

Julie Chinitz’s “Shiftiness: The Border in Eight Cases”: A meditation on mercurial notions of territory and place in U.S. history.

Christian Kiefer’s “Muzzleloader”: A bevy of unexpected visitors intrude on a widow’s refuge in the Colorado forest.

Joe Donnelly’s “Bonus Baby” (a 2016 O.Henry Prize winner): Welcome the return of baseball season with this story of a pitcher sifting through memories while on the mound.

Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “Tracking Gap”: The communications department of a Japanese commercial airline scrambles to handle a PR nightmare when one of its passenger planes disappears.

Plus, more fiction from Molly Giles, Nick Fuller Googins, Ben Greenman, Robin Romm, James Warner, and Monique Wentzel; an essay from Kyle Boelte on serving as a juror (a Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016 selection); poetry from Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, Robert Hass, Ruth Madievsky, Nicole Stellon O’Donnell, D. Eric Parkison, Joshua Rivkin, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet, Joseph Voth, and Matthew Zapruder; artwork from Amos Goldbaum; and a new project from philosopher and artist Jonathon Keats, who asks you to consider the vast potential in emulating bacteria in the corporate world.