Shortworks Paperback – March 2, 2026

The fifteen stories in Shortworks range from the darkly comic to the quietly devastating, but they share a consistent sensibility: an attention to what people can't quite say, what they almost do, and what they leave behind. A philosophy professor uses Galileo's preserved finger to make a room full of students lean forward in their chairs. A caretaker watches a cemetery literally forget its dead each winter and remember them in spring. A man drives past a childhood friend holding a cardboard sign and can't make himself stop. Gym trainers, influencers, muscle-bound narcissists, and a middle school guidance counselor on a date with an actual warlord all move through a world that is slightly tilted—funny in ways that hurt.The collection covers a wide emotional range: the residue of Vietnam on the men who came home, the slow collapse of a gambling father's household, a woman in a chipmunk costume who is still, technically, acting. But even the heaviest stories carry wit, and even the funniest carry weight. What holds them together is the conviction that ordinary life—a parking lot driving lesson, a first date in a Russian bakery, fifty years of marriage—contains more drama, more grace, and more grief than it usually gets credit for. Read more