In the Not Quite Dark: Stories [Paperback]

A collection of bold stories set in downtown Los Angeles that examine large issues like love, class, and race, and how they influence and define our most intimate moments.

With deep insight into character, intimate relationships, and the modern search for personal freedom, In the Not Quite Dark is powerful collection of stories that feels both urgent and timeless from Dana Johnson, the author of the prize-winning collection Break Any Woman Down.

In The Liberace Museum, a mixed–race couple leave the South toward the destination of Vegas, crossing miles of road and history to the promised land of consumption; in Rogues, a young man on break from college lands in his brother's Inland Empire neighborhood during a rash of unexplained robberies; in She Deserves Everything She Gets, a woman listens to the strict advice given to her spoiled niece about going away to college, reflecting on her own experience and the night she lost her best friend; and in the collection's title story, a man setting down roots in downtown L.A. is haunted by the specter of both gentrification and a young female tourist, whose body was found in the water tower of a neighboring building.Praise for In the Not Quite Dark

“Unquestionably excellent stories...In the Not Quite Dark has a variety of voices and stylistic tones yet holds together tightly as a collection. —Los Angeles Times

In her new collection, In the Not Quite Dark, [Johnson] offers 11 electrifying stories filled with tension and truth about present–day Los Angeles. My mother died telling me what to do, her narrator begins in No Blaming the Harvard Boys, a story about a young black student at a midwestern writers' workshop navigating the caste system at a tumultuous party at her prolCV