A finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for her 2009 novel A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore is also an O. Henry Award–winning master of the short story. This debut collection of nine stories, originally published in 1985, introduced readers to Moore's witty, melancholy, and sharply honest voice, from the story of a young secretary who by day hopes someone will notice her Phi Beta Kappa key and by night makes love to a married man she met in front of a shoe store ("How to Be an Other Woman") to one of a woman whose childhood memories come flooding back as her mother lies dying in a hospital ("What Is Seized").
"Moore is so good at trapping each moment in perfect, precise detail, so masterful at cynicism and wryness that her moments of poignancy and sweetness catch us completely off guard."—SFChronicle
