Fabrications: New and Selected Stories (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction)

A crowning collection from the award-winning short story writer Pamela Painter.

Pamela Painter's short stories have been praised by Margot Livesey for their "wicked intelligence and ruthless humor." In Fabrications, which brings together 7 new and 24 selected stories, characters struggle to avoid the chaos in their lives, but--driven by addictions and appetites--often bring on disaster. Nobody is ordinary in Painter's stories. A burglar can't believe what he is asked to do by the woman whose jewelry he is stealing. Hitchhikers, hell-bent on murder, are thwarted by the miracle of story-telling. A wife can make rooms--and her husband--disappear, but saves the family dog. A young woman insists on the romance of being married in an Elvis Presley chapel, but for the wrong reasons.

Fabrications is a testament to Painter's lyric skill and psychological insight across her career.

Praise for Previous Books by Pamela Painter

"These wonderful stories--about dogs and housewives, scholars and teenagers--vividly demonstrate Painter's wicked intelligence and ruthless humor and her utterly democratic interest in all our faults and foibles. . . . [A] quirky, sexy, irresistible collection."--Margot Livesey



"Pamela Painter's stories are warm, wise, funny, and ultimately true to the way we live now--trying to carry on in the face of things breaking down around us. Reading each story is a thrill--for the full-blown lives, astute details, exact metaphors, and pitch-perfect dialogue. She's like a carpenter--nailing it, again and again."--Bobbie Ann Mason

"This is fiction of immense beauty, full of wisdom and informed by rare grace."--Steve Yarbrough