These fifteen exquisitely honed stories reveal Hempel at her most compassionate and spirited, as she introduces characters, lonely and adrift, searching for connection. In "A Full-Service Shelter," a volunteer at a dog shelter tirelessly, devotedly cares for dogs on a list to be euthanized. In "Greed," a spurned wife examines her husband's affair with a glamorous, older married woman. And in "Cloudland," the longest story in the collection, a woman...

LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD

ONE OF TIME'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019

From legendary writer Amy Hempel, one of the most celebrated and original voices in American short fiction: an astounding collection of fifteen stories that are "riveting in precision" (The Atlantic) and "scintillating as the blade of a knife" (The Wall Street Journal)....

The stories in Hempel's new collection follow people through crises and emergencies, waiting for the moment that would snap them out of their seeming lives, yet frequently cut off from meaning in the end. A housewife in "Under No Moon" is mysteriously bent on seeing a comet, but in a minor comedy of errors fails to do so. The earnest and foolish young mother in "The Center" attempts to sponsor a destitute child, all the while behaving with the self-serving...

William Wegman's postcard paintings reflect a lifetime of engagement with narrative, perspective, art history, architecture, popular culture, humour and philosophy in art. Starting with one or more vintage postcards, Wegman constructs scenes that range from intimate interiors to cosmic vistas, filling audaciously complex spaces with intriguing incident. Collected together, the paintings possess the universal, encyclopedic and mysterious qualities...