The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)

Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing as a given from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. At long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is on display: thirty-three stories drawn from three earlier, much lauded collections, and another thirteen stories appearing for the first time in book form. Forty-six stories in all, far and away the most comprehensive volume in her long career, showcasing her crisp, elegant prose, her dark wit, and her uncanny ability to illuminate our world through characters and situations that feel at once peculiar and foreign and yet disturbingly familiar.