Nine Inches

The New York Times–bestselling author of Mrs. Fletcher “turns his satiric gaze on suburbia and unearths gem after gem about modern life” (Connie Ogle, Miami Herald).

Nine Inches, Perrotta’s first true collection, features ten stories—some sharp and funny, some mordant and surprising, and a few intense and disturbing.

Whether he’s dropping into the lives of two teachers—and their love lost and found—in “Nine Inches,” documenting the unraveling of a dad at a Little League game in “The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face,” or gently marking the points of connection between an old woman and a benched high school football player in “Senior Season,” Perrotta writes with a sure sense of his characters and their secret longings.

Nine Inches contains an elegant collection of short fiction: stories that are as assured in their depictions of characters young and old, established and unsure, as any written today.

“With a deft command of structure, [Perrotta] allows multiple characters to cross paths, make mistakes and sometimes correct them, creating ripple effects and counterpoints that add up to a satisfying whole.” —Alix Ohlin, The New York Times

“Nine Inches is a razor-sharp and highly entertaining collection of short stories. It’s also a masterful examination of the fragilities that lie just beneath the surface of our everyday veneers.” —Patrick Ryan, Toronto Star

“Told with wit and grace, Perrotta’s story collection lays bare the shifting relationships we all suffer and seldom comprehend, presenting characters who are ambushed by the hidden intentions of people they thought they knew.” —Publishers Weekly