The Best American Mystery Stories is a yearly anthology of mystery stories published in United States magazines and anthologies. It was started in 1997 as part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin. Stories are chosen using the same procedure with other titles in the Best American series; the series editor (Otto Penzler in this case) chooses about fifty article candidates, from which the guest editor picks 20 or so for publication; the remaining runner-up articles listed in the appendix.