In this darkly comic and surreal collection from celebrated author Alissa Nutting, misfit women scramble for agency in a series of uncanny circumstances Throughout these breathtakingly creative seventeen stories spread across time, space, and differing planes of reality, we encounter a host of women and girls in a wide range of unusual jobs. A space cargo deliverywoman enlists the help of her cybersex partner to release her mother from cryogenic prison. Desperate for affection and a more lavish lifestyle, a young woman falls under the corrosive spell of the fashion model for whom she’s given up everything to assist. A woman submits to a procedure that will turn her body into a futuristic ant farm, only to discover the sinister plans of her doctor. Though the settings these women find themselves in are as shocking and unique as they come, the emotional battles they face are searing and real. Some are trying to fight their way out of the cycle of abuse, while others must cope with the anguish brought on by infertility or the aftershocks of an abortion. Still others confront and embrace their most depraved desires, carving out power for themselves in worlds that relentlessly ask for conformity. Wickedly funny yet ringing with deep truths about gender, authority and the ways we inhabit and restrict the female body, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls is a brilliant commentary on the kaleidoscope of human behavior and a remarkably nuanced satire for our times.

“In this sly and salacious work, Nutting forces us to take a long, unflinching look at a deeply disturbed mind, and more significantly, at society’s often troubling relationship with female beauty.” (San Francisco Chronicle) In Alissa Nutting’s novel Tampa, Celeste Price, a smoldering 26-year-old middle-school teacher in Florida, unrepentantly recounts her elaborate and sociopathically determined seduction of a 14-year-old student. Celeste has chosen and lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his eighth-grade teacher, and, most importantly, willing to accept Celeste’s terms for a secret relationship—car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack’s house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming erotic encounters in Celeste’s empty classroom. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress of pure motivation. She deceives everyone, is close to no one, and cares little for anything but her pleasure. Tampa is a sexually explicit, virtuosically satirical, American Psycho–esque rendering of a monstrously misplaced but undeterrable desire. Laced with black humor and crackling sexualized prose, Alissa Nutting’s Tampa is a grand, seriocomic examination of the want behind student / teacher affairs and a scorching literary debut.

Now an HBO Max series starring Ray Romano and Cristin Milioti From one of our most exciting and provocative young writers, a poignant, riotously funny story of how far some will go for love—and how far some will go to escape it. Hazel has just moved into a trailer park of senior citizens, with her father and Diane—his extremely lifelike sex doll—as her roommates. Life with Hazel’s father is strained at best, but her only alternative seems even bleaker. She’s just run out on her marriage to Byron Gogol, CEO and founder of Gogol Industries, a monolithic corporation hell-bent on making its products and technologies indispensable in daily life. For over a decade, Hazel put up with being veritably quarantined by Byron in the family compound, her every movement and vital sign tracked. But when he demands to wirelessly connect the two of them via brain chips in a first-ever human “mind-meld,” Hazel decides what was once merely irritating has become unbearable. The world she escapes into is a far cry from the dry and clinical bubble she’s been living in, a world populated with a whole host of deviant oddballs. As Hazel tries to carve out a new life for herself in this uncharted territory, Byron is using the most sophisticated tools at his disposal to find her and bring her home. His threats become more and more sinister, and Hazel is forced to take drastic measures in order to find a home of her own and free herself from Byron’s virtual clutches once and for all. Perceptive and compulsively readable, Made for Love is at once an absurd, raunchy comedy and a dazzling, profound meditation marriage, monogamy, and family.

Originally published: Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2015.

The Naked Truth Isn't Always Pretty. A no-holds-barred look at the hilarious underbelly of what it means to be female, Dirty Girls lays bare the secrets of the fairer sex. Women don't come from a different planet than men. In fact, both sexes want the exact same things: success, friendships, semifunctional families, semifunctioning relationships, good bodies, and lots and lots of great sex. But there's more. Even though we pluck, we wax, and we put on war paint to mask our blemishes, we also regularly watch porn. We wear our bikini bottoms when we run out of clean underwear. When we're alone, we eat Cheetos and peanut butter on a spoon for dinner. Women are fascinating, beautiful, and, yes, disgusting creatures, and we shouldn't be ashamed of it. Dirty Girls exposes the filthy, lazy, fabulous truth that everything boys can do, girls can do better.

Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times Set amid the havoc of the War on Drugs, this New York Times bestseller is an "astonishingly intimate" (New York magazine) chronicle of one family’s triumphs and trials in the South Bronx of the 1990s. “Unmatched in depth and power and grace. A profound, achingly beautiful work of narrative nonfiction…The standard-bearer of embedded reportage.” —Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted In her classic bestseller, journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses readers in the world of one family with roots in the Bronx, New York. In 1989, LeBlanc approached Jessica, a young mother whose encounter with the carceral state is about to forever change the direction of her life. This meeting redirected LeBlanc’s reporting, taking her past the perennial stories of crime and violence into the community of women and children who bear the brunt of the insidious violence of poverty. Her book bears witness to the teetering highs and devastating lows in the daily lives of Jessica, her family, and her expanding circle of friends. Set at the height of the War on Drugs, Random Family is a love story—an ode to the families that form us and the families we create for ourselves. Charting the tumultuous struggle of hope against deprivation over three generations, LeBlanc slips behind the statistics and comes back with a riveting, haunting, and distinctly American true story.

A savage journey into the heart of Hunter S. Thompson's Las Vegas with the Good Doctor as tour guide. A Lord-of-the-Rings-like adventure in the city's underground flood channels. A seven-day stay at a seedy motel on East Fremont Street. The stories in My Week at the Blue Angel aren't about Steve Wynn, Cirque du Soleil, or how to play poker, and they aren't set in Caesars Palace, XS Nightclub, or a 2,000-seat showroom. They're about prostitutes, ex-cons, and the homeless, and they're set under Caesars Palace and in trailer parks and weekly motels. In this creative nonfiction collection, Matthew O'Brien--author of Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas--and veteran photographer Bill Hughes show a side of the city rarely seen. A side beyond the neon lights, themed facades, and motel-room doors. A side beyond the barbwire fences, No Trespassing signs, and midnight shadows.