There may be no one better than T. C. Boyle at engaging, shocking, and ultimately gratifying readers while at the same time testing his characters' emotional and physical endurance.

The fourteen stories in this rich new collection display T. C. Boyle's astonishing range and imaginative muscle. Nature is the dominant player in many of these stories, whether in the form of a catastrophic mudslide that allows a cynic to reclaim his humanity

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"Peeling apples for tartes tatin, an Ohio mother wonders how to exist in a world of distraction and fake facts, besieged by a tweet-happy president and trigger-happy neighbors, all of them oblivious to what Dupont has dumped into the rivers and what's happening at the factory farm down the interstate--not to mention what was done to the land's first inhabitants. A torrent of consciousness, narrated in a single sentence by a woman whose wandering thoughts...

"Nine richly varied, often funny, always moving stories that cross a range of landscapes and generations to reveal the complex workings of the human heart. Bill Roorbach conjures vivid, complex characters whose layered interior worlds feel at once familiar and extraordinary. He first made his mark as the winner of an O. Henry Prize for one of his stories and the Flannery O'Connor Award for his first collection, Big Bend. His astounding new collection,...

"Since losing her husband, Tobias, in a tragic accident, Carol Denman has been on a journey of self-growth. She's taken steps to finally grieve her daughter's death, forgive her first husband, and mend her broken relationship with her mother. The one heartbreak she can't seem to come to terms with is losing her husband ... She knows her husband would want her to be happy again. She just has to figure out how to move forward. Coming to terms with being...