The Literary Dog: Great Contemporary Dog Stories

“Dogs are not people dressed up in fur coats, and to deny them their nature is to do them great harm.” So says short-story writer Jeanne Schinto in her witty introduction to The Literary Dog, a superlative collection of contemporary stories written by some of the most important writers of our time.

A traditional dog story usually recounts some heroic and unbelievable dog deed that the teller swears is true. The stories in The Literary Dog, however, are not traditional dog stories at all. Wr...