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With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2017.

Little Rosie Wilder is perfect at everything. She can sing and dance, she plays several musical instruments, and her IQ is so high it's off the scale. So how did Claudia "C-" Kishi get stuck baby-sitting for Rosie the genius? It's because Rosie is so obnoxious that no one gets along with her - not even Claudia's sister, who's a genius, too. The baby-sitters think that Rosie needs to be taught a good lesson. But maybe what Rosie really needs is a good friend...like Claudia.

Everyone knows Alice slept with two guys at one party. When Healy High star quarterback Brandon Fitzsimmons dies in a car crash, it was because he was sexting with Alice. Ask anybody. Rumor has it Alice Franklin is a slut. It's written all over the "slut stall" in the girls' bathroom: "Alice had sex in exchange for math test answers" and "Alice got an abortion last semester." After Brandon dies, the rumors start to spiral out of control.

November is filled with excitement, surprises, and difficult choices for Claudia, Queen of the seventh grade...and no one can make her choices for her.

Dark times have fallen on McQuarrie Middle School. Dwight's back - and not a moment too soon, as the gang faces the FunTime Menace: a new educational program designed to raise students' standardized test scores. Instead, it's driving everyone crazy with its obnoxious videos of Professor FunTime and his insidious singing calculator! When Principal Rabbski cancels the students' field trip - along with art, music, and LEGO classes - to make time for FunTime, the students turn to Origami Yoda for help.

Maia and her family raise dragons for the political war machine. As she comes of age, she anticipates a dragon of her own to add to the stable of breeding parents. Her peaceful life is shattered when the Summer Dragon - one of the rare and mythical High Dragons - makes an appearance in her quiet valley. Political factions vie for control of the implied message, threatening her aspirations, her aerie, her entire way of life.

Claudia, who has always been very different from her sister, comes to the conclusion that she must be adopted.

Claudia enters a contest to host a kids' radio show for a month - and wins!

In one of the strongest Babysitters Club books ever, the club must deal with a client who is abusive toward his children. Ann M. Martin addresses a difficult and important topic in her characteristic sensitive and informed style.

Set in 1640s Puritan Massachusetts, this "flawlessly crafted" ( Booklist) historical novel by Christy Award finalist Siri Mitchell delivers a heart-wrenching tale of true love and triumphant grace. While Susannah awaits an overdue marriage proposal, a powerful villager takes a fancy to her. But after a dashing military captain comes to town, she's unprepared for the sinister turn her life soon takes.

Best-selling author Sandra Dallas has won rave reviews for this tale set during the Civil War. When Alice Bullock's husband joins the Union Army, the young quilting enthusiast is left to deal with an Iowa farm and an imposing mother-in-law. And then her life turns upside down when she's accused of murder.

The tech boom of our time is changing San Francisco at warp speed. Famously home to artists and activists, and known as the birthplace of the Beats, the Black Panthers, and the LGBTQ movement, the Bay Area has been transformed by Silicon Valley. But the richer the region gets, the more unequal and less diverse it becomes, and the cracks in the city's facade begin to show. Inspired by Studs Terkel's classic works of oral history, writer Cary McClelland has spent years interviewing people at the epicenter of the Bay Area's rapid change: tech innovators, venture capitalists, coders, homeless advocates, pawn brokers, prosecutors, public defenders....

The final Origami Yoda case file from the kids at McQuarrie Middle School! After successfully fighting to save their field trip in Princess Labelmaker to the Rescue!, Tommy and the gang prepare for a well-earned day of fun and adventure in Washington, DC - but of course it won’t be that easy! This trip to the nation's capital will be full of shifting alliances and betrayals, carsickness and sugar rushes.

When her troubles in school culminate in her being dropped back to the seventh grade, Claudia struggles with feelings of failure while adjusting to classmates outside of the Baby-sitters Club.

Kris Merrill's life changed irrevocably when, a year ago, she was targeted for termination by the Meridian corporation, one of the mega-conglomerates that controls the government in this dystopian future. She hid amongst the underground resistance - but now, right as her training with the anti-corporate movement is nearing its end, their compound is destroyed. Ready or not, Kris and the other trainees are recalled to the dangerous metropolis of San Angeles.

In The Silver Kiss—Annette Curtis Klause’s critically acclaimed debut novel—life’s tough for 16-year-old Zoe Sutcliff. Her mom is dying, her dad is growing distant, and her best friend is moving. Sorting out her thoughts one night, Zoe sees a man lurking about. Taken aback at first, she finds herself drawn to the handsome stranger who seems to sense what’s in her heart. As the two exchange life stories, he makes a startling revelation

Writing a Thanksgiving play for the third-grade class she coaches, Claudia is disappointed when some parents object to her less-than-traditional themes, and she must choose between letting the other kids down or fighting censorship.

Claudia's loving the October weather and her many friends, both in school and in the BSC. But when she throws a party to bring her two groups of pals together, she creates more problems than she solves.

The baby-sitters love getting new clients. So when the Lowells contact the club, everyone is thrilled. For Mary Anne, sitting for the Lowells is a snap, and the kids are adorable and obedient. But when Claudia meets the family, Mrs. Lowell will barely look her in the eye, and the kids are downright rude! The next time Mrs. Lowell calls the BSC, she requests another sitter - anyone but Claudia. Claudia has no idea what she did wrong, but the BSC won't rest until they find out!

In the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell, Amber Sparks' dazzling new collection bursts forth with stories that render the apocalyptic and otherworldly hauntingly familiar. In "The Cemetery for Lost Faces", two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, The Unfinished World, unfurls a surprising love story between a free and adventurous young woman and a dashing filmmaker burdened by a mysterious family.