Games and Rituals

The beloved author of Early Morning Riser ("The funniest novel of the year." --The Washington Post) brings us eleven glittering stories of love--friendships formed at the airport bar, ex-husbands with benefits, mothers of suspiciously sweet teenagers, ill-advised trysts--in all its forms, both ridiculous and sublime. The games and rituals performed by Katherine Heiny's characters range from mischievous to tender: In "Bridesmaid, Revisited," Marlee, suffering from a laundry and life crisis, wears a massive bridesmaid's dress to work. In "Twist and Shout," Ericka's elderly father mistakes his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid for a cashew and eats it. In "Turn Back, Turn Back," a bedtime story coupled with a receipt for a Starbucks babyccino reveal a struggling actor's deception. And in "561," Charlene pays the true price of infidelity and is forced to help her husband's ex-wife move out of the family home. ("It's like you're North Korea and South Korea . . . But would North Korea help South Korea move?") From one of our most celebrated writers, our bard of waking up in the wrong bed, wearing the wrong shoes, late for the wrong job, but loved by the right people, Heiny has delivered a work of glorious humor and immense kindness.