'The best short story writer in the world' Susan Hill 'This book is a spectacular literary revelation' Sunday Times The collected stories of an award-winning, modern classic American writer who has been compared to Alice Munro, John Updike - and even Anton Chekhov Tenderly, incisively, Edith Pearlman captured life on the page like no one else. Spanning forty years of writing, moving from tsarist Russia to the coast of Maine, from Jerusalem to Massachusetts, these astonishing stories reveal one of America's greatest modern writers. Across a stunning array of scenes-an unforeseen love affair between adolescent cousins, an elderly couple's decision to shoplift, an old woman's deathbed confession of her mother's affair-Edith Pearlman crafts a timeless and unique sensibility, shot through with wit, lucidity and compassion.