For the commitment-averse women in these eleven sublime laugh-out-loud stories, falling in love is never easy and always inconvenient. “Single, Carefree, Mellow is a lot like the women who populate it: smart and sexy and a little bit ruthless.” —Entertainment Weekly “Something like Cheever mixed with Ephron.” —The New York Times Book Review Maya is in love with both her boyfriend and her boss. Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Nina is more worried that the Presbyterian minister living above her garage will hear her kids swearing than that he will find out she’s sleeping with her running partner. The women grapple with love amidst everything from unwelcome houseguests to disastrous birthday parties as Katherine Heiny spins a debut that is superbly accomplished and endlessly entertaining.

'Katherine Heiny's work does something magical: elevates the mundane so that it has the stakes of a mystery novel, gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve - and makes you laugh along the way' Lena Dunham Maya's dog is dying, and she is planning to leave her boyfriend. On the whole she feels worse about the dog. Nina thought it might be difficult to summon the moral fortitude to have an extramarital affair with a Presbyterian minister living above the garbage, but she discovers that almost anything is possible. A teenager finds an affair with her history teacher too sealed off from the rest of her life, like the last slice of cake under a glass dome. These women are best friends, roommates and mistresses. They tipple and titillate, fantasize and fumble, worry and wander. They make poor choices in men and children's magicians and wise choices in what to wear to meet their lovers' wives. None of them are single (or carefree or mellow) but all are irresistible and all too familiar.

The wonderful story collection from the author of Standard Deviation ‘Heiny's work does something magical: gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve and makes you laugh along the way’ Lena Dunham ‘Like Cheever mixed with Ephron’ New York Times ‘Simply wonderful, I savoured every page’ Guardian

TheSkimm’s Best of Skimm Reads NPR’s Guide to Great Reads The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Fiction of the Year Minnesota Public Radio’s The Best Books to Give and Get: Fiction Picks of the Year An uproarious novel ("Both heart-piercing and, crucially, very funny." —Louise Erdrich, The New York Times) from the celebrated author of Single, Carefree, Mellow about the challenges of a good marriage, the delight and heartache of raising children, and the irresistible temptation to wonder about the path not taken. When Graham Cavanaugh divorced his first wife it was to marry his girlfriend, Audra, a woman as irrepressible as she is spontaneous and fun. But, Graham learns, life with Audra can also be exhausting, constantly interrupted by chatty phone calls, picky-eater houseguests, and invitations to weddings of people he’s never met. Audra firmly believes that through the sheer force of her personality she can overcome the most socially challenging interactions, shepherding her son through awkward playdates and origami club, and even deciding to establish a friendship with Graham’s first wife, Elspeth. Graham isn't sure he understands why Audra longs to be friends with the woman he divorced. After all, former spouses are hard to categorize—are they enemies, old flames, or just people you know really, really well? And as Graham and Audra share dinners, holidays, and late glasses of wine with his first wife he starts to wonder: How can anyone love two such different women? Did I make the right choice? Is there a right choice? A hilarious and rueful debut novel of love, marriage, infidelity, and origami, Standard Deviation never deviates from the superb.

Alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, a wise, bighearted novel of love, disaster, and unconventional family—from the acclaimed author of Standard Deviation, who has been called the "literary descendant of Jane Austen, sharing Austen's essentially comic world view" (NPR). Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan's old girlfriends everywhere—at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away. While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world's most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, a woman with shiny hair and pale milkmaid skin, still has Duncan mow her lawn. His coworker, Jimmy, comes and goes from Duncan's apartment at the most inopportune times. Sometimes Jane wonders if a relationship can even work with three people in it—never mind four. Five if you count Aggie's eccentric husband, Gary. Not to mention all the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices. But any notion Jane had of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash. Soon Jane's life is permanently intertwined with Duncan's, Aggie's, and Jimmy's, and Jane knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But could it be possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of Jane's eyes? Katherine Heiny's Early Morning Riser is her most astonishingly wonderful work to date.

"Dance like nobody gives a crap. Drink like you don't have a family to go home to. Love because what else is the point." So says one of the characters in Lara Williams' extraordinary debut story collection. Treats is a break-up album of tales covering relationships, the tyranny of choice, and self navigation. This fresh, beguiling new voice paints a portrait of contemporary adulthood, balancing wry humour with a pervading sense of alienation in the digital era. Williams' characters struggle with how to negotiate intimacy within relationships and isolation when single, the pitfalls and indignities of dating, dragged down by dissatisfaction. Meanwhile the dilemmas of life play out, including abortion, depression, extra-marital affairs, infatuation, new baby anxiety, bereavement, hair loss, sexual ethics, cats, and taxidermy. Praise for Treats: 'What a wonderful collection. Very smart and VERY funny. A stunning mix of measured wisdom and raw emotion. There's also a real sense that these stories - beautiful in their own right - belong together. I loved the connection between them, and the way ideas were subtle and steadily developed from beginning to end.' Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals 'Maybe you meet someone. Maybe you fall in love. Maybe you break up. Maybe someone writes a book about your life. This is that book. Brilliant stories; awesome debut.' Nicholas Royle, editor of Best British Short Stories 2015 'Funny and witty and sad and painfully self-aware.' Chris Killen, author of The Bird Room and In Real Life '[Treats] is described as a break-up album of tales covering relationships and their aftermath. So far, so Adele - but if the inescapable singer is the beige paint on a crumbling wall, this is more akin to sniffing that paint and seeing every colour in the rainbow.' The Skinny 'Each of these stories blows like a bracing wind - brilliantly written, devastating in parts but an acuity, a sense of the smallness and frailty of human relationships. Stories that make you seek shelter out of their keen urbane gaze.' Helen McClory, author of On The Edges of Vision

"Delightful... elegant prose and discussions that span the history of 2,000 years of literature."—Publisher's Weekly A novel is a story transmitted from the novelist to the reader. It offers distraction, entertainment, and an opportunity to unwind or focus. But it can also be something more powerful—a way to learn about how to live. Read at the right moment in your life, a novel can—quite literally—change it. The Novel Cure is a reminder of that power. To create this apothecary, the authors have trawled two thousand years of literature for novels that effectively promote happiness, health, and sanity, written by brilliant minds who knew what it meant to be human and wrote their life lessons into their fiction. Structured like a reference book, readers simply look up their ailment, be it agoraphobia, boredom, or a midlife crisis, and are given a novel to read as the antidote. Bibliotherapy does not discriminate between pains of the body and pains of the head (or heart). Aware that you’ve been cowardly? Pick up To Kill a Mockingbird for an injection of courage. Experiencing a sudden, acute fear of death? Read One Hundred Years of Solitude for some perspective on the larger cycle of life. Nervous about throwing a dinner party? Ali Smith’s There but for The will convince you that yours could never go that wrong. Whatever your condition, the prescription is simple: a novel (or two), to be read at regular intervals and in nice long chunks until you finish. Some treatments will lead to a complete cure. Others will offer solace, showing that you’re not the first to experience these emotions. The Novel Cure is also peppered with useful lists and sidebars recommending the best novels to read when you’re stuck in traffic or can’t fall asleep, the most important novels to read during every decade of life, and many more. Brilliant in concept and deeply satisfying in execution, The Novel Cure belongs on everyone’s bookshelf and in every medicine cabinet. It will make even the most well-read fiction aficionado pick up a novel he’s never heard of, and see familiar ones with new eyes. Mostly, it will reaffirm literature’s ability to distract and transport, to resonate and reassure, to change the way we see the world and our place in it. "This appealing and helpful read is guaranteed to double the length of a to-read list and become a go-to reference for those unsure of their reading identities or who are overwhelmed by the sheer number of books in the world."—Library Journal

A modern classic first published in 1978 that is as much a sophisticated romantic comedy about the love between two partners as it is a novel about the powerful bonds shared by family members, friends, colleagues and confidants. “A comedy of manners that reminds us that manners are comic and should be enjoyed as such.” —The New York Times Guido and Vincent, best friends (and third cousins), aren’t expecting to fall head-over-heels in love, but that is exactly what happens. Guido is smitten with Holly, a dazzling young woman who chafes at the idea of complacency, while Vincent falls for Misty, a work colleague with an acerbic sense of humor who seems as uninterested in romance as she is in Vincent (at first). In the months that follow, both couples will experience the rituals of courtship, jealousy, estrangement, family entanglements, and other perils of the heart as they try to find love in spite of themselves. Colwin is a master of portraying the messiness of life: here, in hilarious and endearing prose, she follows these two improbable pairs, and their families, as they navigate and ultimately find happiness together—not all the time, but for most of it. With a foreword by Katherine Heiny.

Nominated for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Nominated for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize A boldly candid, raw portrait of a young woman's search for meaning and purpose in an indifferent world Purposefully aimless, self-destructive, and impulsively in and out of love, Elsie is a young woman who feels lost. She's in a tumultuous relationship, is stuck in a dead-end job, and has a relentless, sharp intelligence that’s at odds with her many bad decisions. When her initial attempts to improve her life go awry, Elsie decides that a dramatic change is the only solution. While traveling through Paris and Sri Lanka, Elsie meets people who challenge and provoke her towards the change she is seeking, but ultimately she must still come face-to-face with herself. Whole-hearted, fiercely honest and inexorably human, Wreck and Order is a stirring debut novel that, in mirroring one young woman's dizzying quest for answers, illuminates the important questions that drive us all.

Suzan Colon, yoga teacher and former senior editor at O, The Oprah Magazine, digs deep into the spiritual philosophy behind yoga and distills thirty essential components to enrich your practice and revolutionize your life from the inside out. We live in an increasingly stressful world, and we know about the hazardous effects stress can have on our health. But meditating and mindfulness can sometimes seem elusive, unattainable, and impossible to fit into our busy days. Even the word “yoga” usually makes many people think of complicated, twisty poses—but that’s not everything. In its complete sense, yoga is a collection of life lessons for wellness and well-being and a spiritual technology from ancient times that is now more relevant, and necessary, than ever. In Yoga Mind, Suzan Colon shares thirty essential components to increase self- awareness and inner balance to use throughout your day—in traffic, on the train, at your job, and home. She outlines how we can use yoga to cultivate resilience in challenging times, reduce stress, and enrich our relationships with family, work, and ourselves. This guide contains a 30-day program designed to create subtle yet powerful shifts in awareness and attitude that lead to real, lasting change. Whether you’re a hardcore yogi or a beginner to the practice, Yoga Mind can help you unite your body, mind, and heart to become your best self and cultivate lasting happiness in your life.