The new collection from the New York Times bestselling author of The Leftovers and Little Children, featuring stories focusing on Perrotta's familiar suburban nuclear families.

Tom Perrotta’s first book, Bad Haircut, consisted of linked stories featuring a shared protagonist. Now, nineteen years later, he has written and compiled his first true short story collection. This twelve story collection features a group set in Perrotta’s trademark suburban setting, focusing on the fissures in families and unexpected connections among members of typical American communities, including “Senior Season” and "Nine Inches." Other offerings showcase Perrotta's assured, smooth writing, but many may surprise fans with new protagonists and concerns. One of these twistier stories is “The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face,” which was the Boston Book Festival’s first all-city One City, One Story selection in 2010.

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Following up on his dramatic and bestselling novel The Leftovers, which is being developed by HBO as a series, Nine Inches is a varied and interesting book from one of our most thoughtful and elegant writers.

Tom Perrotta is the author of eight books, most recently The Leftovers. His breakout novel Little Children was featured on numerous “best of the year” lists, including the New York Times, Newsweek, and National Public Radio, and two of his novels — Election and Little Children — have been made into acclaimed and award-winning movies. He has also taught creative writing at Yale and Harvard universities. Perrotta grew up in New Jersey and now lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

Tom Perrotta's profile page

Perrotta novels are known for their unpredictable, edgy content and often morally ambiguous characters. The 12 stories in Nine Inches do not disappoint.

Winnipeg Free Press

Perrotta’s writing style is distinct. He is a direct, conversational, and graceful writer whom eases readers into the work. In particular, Perrotta’s writing allows the characters to come alive...

The Weekender

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.

New York Times

Mr. Perrotta is...heralded as an all-purpose chronicler of suburbia...

Wall Street Journal

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.

Toronto Star

The dark suburban tales of Nine Inches are compelling and likely to appeal even to many Americans with no special interest in the short story...

The Millions

...his writing is funny, thoughtful and highly readable.

Star Tribune

Clear, straightforward and unaffected, the writing in this book dazzles...

Gauntlet

Perrotta perfectly captures the low-level agony the people we’re forced to engage with [...] can cause us.

Dallas Morning NEws

...Perrotta turns his satiric gaze on suburbia and unearths gem after gem about modern life.

Miami Herald

As deeply satisfying and insidiously disturbing as the author's longer fiction.

Kirkus

Perrotta’s best asset is his great, big heart: You find yourself rooting for vulnerable antiheroes and heroines...

Washington Post

The author’s uncanny finesse with treading the line between the broadly comedic and nearly maudlin by dint of spare language and quiet observation is the gift that separates him from so many chroniclers of our time.

Time Out

One of the pleasures of Nine Inches is that...[the stories] have emotional momentum.

Boston Globe

...Perrotta mines his familiar but fascinating territory...

Entertainment Weekly

...first-rate stories for grownups of every stripe.

Portland Press Herald

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.

Publisher's Weekly

...there are no duds in Nine Inches...

NPR