The debut novel from award-winning author Lori Ostlund—“smart, resonant, and imbued with beauty” (Publishers Weekly) that “provides considerable pleasure and emotional power” (The New York Times Book Review)—about a man who leaves his longtime partner in New Mexico for a tragicomic road trip deep into the mysteries of his own Midwestern childhood.Sensitive, bighearted, and achingly self-conscious, forty-year-old Aaron Englund long ago esc...

**Shortlisted for the 2026 Joyce Carol Oates PrizeLonglisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature AwardPublishing Triangle's Ferro Gumley Award for LGBTQ+ Fiction FinalistCalifornia Book Awards FinalistWashington Post Notable Work of Fiction from 2025Electric Literature Best Short Story Collection of 2025Kirkus Best Fiction Book of 2025"Don’t let Are You Happy? pass you by: There’s not a word out of place in these brilli...

Winner of the Flannery O’Connor Prize, the Edmund White Award, and the California Book Award, Lori Ostlund’s “heartbreaking and wonderful” (Pulitzer Prize–winning author Richard Russo) debut collection of stories about men and women confronting the unmapped and unexpected.In Lori Ostlund’s award-winning debut collection, people seeking escape from situations at home venture out into a world that they find is just as complicated and troubled as the one they left beh...

These stories are enveloped by change and the changes that shift the trajectories of our lives: change that shatters us, change that opens the world, and change from which we can never come back. These fourteen stories tell us about extensive and inevitable changes and how we realign ourselves and our lives, if we can.

Travel, and the exhilarating experiences it offers us, is the shared concern of these stories, which have been chosen from among the hundreds that have appeared in the prestigious Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction series.More than seventy volumes, which include approximately eight hundred stories, have won the Flannery O'Connor Award. This stunning trove of always engaging, often groundbreaking short fiction is the common source for this anthology on childhood—and for plann...

Front porches, family cars, playgrounds, swimming pools: from such familiar haunts of childhood, these stories look out on the world through young eyes and hearts. Wise beyond their years—or soon to be—Ruthie, Omar, J.J., and the other kids in these stories veer in and out of touching distance to hard lessons about trust, love, and mortality. However engaged or aloof, grownups are always nearby. Far-from-perfect emissaries to the realm of adulthood, they pose questions for children even as...

"Once I read the first story in Are You Happy?, I put aside everything else to savor the rest. This is a wise collection, capturing its characters swimming upstream to encounter their fates. With vivid and compassionate prose that explores the countless ways we betray and then rediscover ourselves, Lori Ostlund reminds us of the vitality of the genre."—Jai Chakrabarti, author of A Play for the End of the World and A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happi...

From Flannery O'Connor and Rona Jaffe Award winner Lori Ostlund, a deeply moving and beautiful debut novel about a man who leaves his longtime partner in New Mexico for a new life in San Francisco, launching him on a tragicomic road trip and deep into the mysteries of his own Midwestern childhood.Sensitive, big-hearted and achingly self-conscious, forty-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After twenty ...

A daring, brilliant new novel from Man Booker Prize finalist Steve Toltz, for fans of Dave Eggers, Martin Amis, and David Foster Wallace: a fearlessly funny, outrageously inventive dark comedy about two lifelong friends.Liam is a struggling writer and a failing cop. Aldo, his best friend and muse, is a haplessly criminal entrepreneur with an uncanny knack for disaster. As Aldo's luck worsens, Liam is inspired to base his next book on his best friend's exponential m...

From bestselling author Ania Ahlborn comes this #HorrorBookTok sensation and novel of terror…the unforgettable story of a young man determined to break from his family’s unconventional—and deeply disturbing—traditions.Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it’s served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don’t knock on their door. Which is a good th...

From the Governor General’s Award-winning author of Cool Water, a poignant and often witty new novel about rash acts and altered lives.When sharp-edged Frances Moon and her long-time partner encounter a funeral procession that brings traffic to a halt, she finds herself blurting out the barest thread of a story that she never intended to share. The reverberations drive her back to the past and her mother’s old rental property, the lone house in a failed su...

In this riveting novel, two boys discover the true meaning of family and the sacrifices it requires.Two-time Newbery Honor winner Gary D. Schmidt delivers the shattering story of Joseph, a father at thirteen, who has never seen his daughter, Jupiter.After spending time in a juvenile facility, he’s placed with a foster family on a farm in rural Maine. Here Joseph, damaged and withdrawn, meets twelve-year-old Jack, who narrates this emotional coming of age st...