One of our truly essential new writers

Ross is the kind of writer who gets into his often-dysfunctional characters' heads with ease and inhabits them with compassion, giving them a sense of vulnerability... His prose has a pleasing ease to it, without being easy - there's an edge to the worlds he creates that rewards closer reading and prevents sentimentality or predictability. Definitely one to watch

If you like short stories with a sharp twist in the tale, Adam Ross' astringent collection will be perfectly to your taste

Witty and well-shaped short-story collection... Ross charts the progress of his characters' disillusionment with a compelling mixture of sympathy and ironic detachment

Ross is a gifted writer with a soft spot for the kind of stop - you - in - your - tracks twists that will have readers dropping their cups of tea, slow-mo, into their laps

Vivid depictions of modern anxiety and a lament to humankind's waning attachment to commitment, deftly told by one of the most accomplished new writers working in the US today

Ten years ago the American short story was in decline. Now it is once again a vital genre

Distinctive, surreal and intelligent

Sublimely irresistible