Last Day on Earth : Stories

From the award-winning author of Music Through the Floor and Model Home , a riveting and profoundly moving story collection by a writer "uncannily in tune with the heartbreak and absurdity of domestic life" ( Los Angeles Times ). A boy on the edge of adolescence fears his mother might be a robot; a psychotically depressed woman is entrusted with taking her niece and nephew trick-or-treating; a reluctant dad brings his baby to a debaucherous party; a teenage boy tries to prevent his mother from putting his estranged father's dogs to sleep. Ranging from a youth arts camp to an aging punk band's reunion tour, from a dystopian future where parents no longer exist to a ferociously independent bookstore, Last Day on Earth revolves around the endlessly complex, frequently surreal system that is family. Eric Puchner, hailed as "technically gifted and emotionally insightful" ( The New York Times Book Review ), and someone who "puts the story back in short story" ( San Francisco Chronicle ), delivers a gloriously original, utterly memorable collection that evokes both the comedy and tragedy of our lifelong endeavor to come of age.