Beautiful Days

One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2024

2025 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection

“A bright new voice in fiction…A genuine young talent, one who deftly palpates the dark areas of human psyches…Like Gabriel García Márquez and Stephen King…we might be staring before long at [the] 'Selected Stories of Zach Williams.'”  
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review

“One of the year’s best debuts…this writer’s got talent to burn.” 
—The Washington Post

“Remarkable...Revelatory...Williams’s tales deserve favorable comparison to the stories of Wells Tower and George Saunders.” 
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A remarkable collection.” 
—Percival Everett, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning author of James

A couple awakens in a home in the woods to find themselves rapidly aging as their toddler remains unchanged. A work-worn employee navigates conspiracy theories and the threat of violence in an abandoned office. A tour guide leads a troublesome group to an ancient structure, apparently nonhuman in origin, discovering along the way that the most mysterious creatures of all are right beside him.

These ten stories show the fallibility of time and how reality reveals itself behind the gauze of a dream—or a nightmare. Throughout, Williams illustrates how quickly we come to the edges of our patience and endurance, the hidden damages lurking in the shadows of the everyday, the distances we must travel to protect our families, and the tenuousness of even our deepest relationships. Williams sees the perversity in the mundane and dares readers to confront the power—and beauty—of time’s relentless movement.

With exquisite prose and a lacerating wit, Beautiful Days holds a mirror to the many absurdities of being human and refuses to let us look away.