A stunning collection of tender and brilliant stories about the moments when life changes you—for the better, for the worse, for the outrageous.

"One of our finest practitioners of the short story form returns with an ebullient second collection. . . . Wise, poignant, and generous of spirit, these stories remind us that Jess Walter is a national treasure."—Esquire

 “Empathetic yet unsentimental [and] intensely affecting fiction. . . . Largehearted and wonderfully inventive. “—Hilma Wolitzer, New York Times Book Review

All of us live like we’re famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don’t want others to see. In each of Jess Walter’s unforgettable stories, characters are confronted with their roles in life and find inspiration in the unlikeliest of places. In “Mr. Voice,” a teenage girl struggles with the lesson from her beautiful, absent mother that her “looks are like a bank account.” In “Fran’s Friend Has Cancer,” an elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. In “Town & Country,” an adult son in Boise, Idaho, must repeatedly come out to his senile father. A “Famous Actor” in recovery has a one-night stand with an unexpected film critic. And in the romantic title story, a shy twenty-one-year-old studying in Rome during “the year of my reinvention” finds himself face-to-face with the Italian actress of his Hollywood-soaked adolescent dreams.

Funny, poignant, full-hearted, and redemptive, Walter’s highly anticipated second collection of short fiction—following We Live in Water, which Barack Obama chose as one of his favorite books of 2019—showcases the dazzling range and enduring power of his work.

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (June 27, 2023)
• ISBN-13: 978-0062868121