Emporium Stories [Paperback]

The remarkable (The New Yorker) debut story collection by the author ofThe Orphan Master's Son (winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize) and the story collectionFortune Smiles (winner of the 2015 National Book Award)

An ATF raid, a moonshot gone wrong, a busload of female cancer victims determined to live life to the fullest—these are the compelling terrains Adam Johnson explores in his electrifying debut collection. A lovesick teenage Cajun girl, a gay Canadian astrophysicist, a teenage sniper on the LAPD payroll, a post-apocalyptic bulletproof-vest salesman—each seeks connection and meaning in landscapes made uncertain by the voids that parents and lovers should fill. With imaginative grace and verbal acuity, Johnson is satirical without being cold, clever without being cloying, and heartbreaking without being sentimental. He shreds the veneer of our media-saturated, self-help society, revealing the lonely isolation that binds us all together. A collection worth owning...a writer worth watching...stories worth reading.  —The New York Times Book Review

Remarkable.  —The New Yorker

Masterful.  —The San Francisco Chronicle

Adam Johnson, a former Wallace Stegner Fellow, teaches creative writing at Stanford University. His fiction has appeared inEsquire,The Paris Review,Harper's,Missouri Review, andNew England Review, as well asBest New American Voices. He is the author of the acclaimed novelsParasites Like UsandThe Orphan Master's Son, winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.TEEN SNIPER

When I reach the rooftop, I pull the dustcovers off my rifle scope and head for a folding chair leaned up against an air-conditioning unit-right where I left it the last time I was up here. Sitting down, I have a clear view across a courtyard of lawns and fountains to Hewlett Packard. I line up a lóÊ