Honored Guest

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Sep 1, 2010 - Fiction - 224 pages

Among the "best American short stories of the past two decades" (The Atlantic Monthly) from one of our most acclaimed writers.

In short stories "so vibrant and alive they have heartbeats, the prose so electric and dazzling it makes the pulse race" (Vanity Fair), a masseuse breaks her rich client's wrist bone, a friend visits at the hospital long after she is welcome, and a woman surrenders her husband to a creepily adoring student.

With her singular brand of gorgeous dark humor, Joy Williams explores the various ways—comic, tragic, and unnerving—we seek to accommodate diminishment and loss, offering a rich examination of our capacity for transformation and salvation.

Other editions - View all

About the author (2010)

Joy Williams is the author of four novels–the most recent, The Quick and the Dead, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001–and three other collections of stories, as well as Ill Nature, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Among her many honors are the Rea Award for the short story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Key West, Florida, and Tucson, Arizona.

Bibliographic information