"No one knows us quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the ad agency Joshua Ferris depicts in his debut novel is family at its strangest and best, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks." "Among the coworkers fighting for their...

Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn't appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life's compromises and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eternal romantic would like out of his present circumstances and into the American dream. But when the twin calamities of the Great Recession and a cancer scare come along to compound his troubles, his dreams dwindle further, and an infinite past...

Sarah Walters becomes increasingly disenchanted with undercurrents of barbarism in her Southern community and relocates to New York, where she and fellow displaced Southerners struggle to make sense of the city's sophistication.

Simple text and illustrations show how children can help protect the Earth.

Presents twenty of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.