The fourteen stories in this dazzling collection continue acclaimed author Lauren B. Davis' exploration into her characters' psychological landscapes, and ensure her reputation as a writer of razor-sharp intellect and deep compassion. Weaving these stories together is the notion that what one wants and what one needs is not always the same thing: a tale of a heartbroken father coming to terms with the drug-overdose death of his son; a child who must choose between the safety of her mother's controlling overindulgence and the wider, more dangerous world; a young girl outsmarting a pedophile during what she calls "the summer of naked men"; to a brilliant but socially awkward woman who deals with betrayal by taking on the persona of a bear....Davis hits the nail on the head each and every time.

Lauren B. Davis is the author of Against A Darkening Sky; The Empty Room, named one of the Best Books of the Year by the National Post, the Winnipeg Free Press, Amazon and the Coast; and Our Daily Bread, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Globe & Mail and the Boston Globe. Her other books include the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels The Radiant City, a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and The Stubborn Season, one of the Top Fifteen Bestselling First Novels by Amazon and Books in Canada, as well as two short story collections, An Unrehearsed Desire and Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives.

Her short fiction has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Award and the ReLit Award, and she is the recipientof two Mid-Career Writer Sustaining grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. Lauren was born in Montreal and now lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with her Best Beloved, Ron, and Bailey, the extremely spoiled rescue pup.

Lauren B. Davis' profile page