In her second story collection, Curtis Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned. In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,” a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,” a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,” Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel PREP a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school. 

Sally Milz is a sketch writer for “The Night Owls,” a late-night live comedy show that airs every Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love. But when Sally’s friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actress who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show who’ve gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women. Enter Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation with a reputation for dating models, who signed on as both host and musical guest for this week’s show. Sally hits it off with Noah instantly. As they collaborate on one sketch after another, she begins to wonder if there might actually be sparks flying.

In 1972, law students Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton meet on the campus of Yale University. In each other, they find a profound intellectual, emotional and physical connection that neither has previously experienced. In the real world, Hillary followed Bill back to Arkansas, and eventually they married. But in Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel, Hillary takes a different road. Feeling doubt about the prospective marriage, she endures their devastating breakup and leaves Arkansas. Over the next four decades, she blazes her own trail --- one that unfolds in public as well as in private, that involves crossing paths again (and again) with Bill Clinton, that raises questions about the tradeoffs all of us must make in building a life.

Throughout the 10 stories in her first collection of short fiction, Curtis Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided. In “The World Has Many Butterflies,” married acquaintances play a strangely intimate game with devastating consequences. In “A Regular Couple,” a high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. And in “The Prairie Wife,” a suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle empire may or may not be built on a lie.

This version of the Bennet family --- and Mr. Darcy --- is one that you have and haven’t met before. Liz is a magazine writer in her late 30s who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help --- and discover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling and the family is in disarray.

Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, were born with innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people’s secrets. Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. When a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. She is ultimately forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she has long tried to deny.