{"product_id":"beautiful-days-isbn-9780593685747","title":"Beautiful Days","description":"\u003cb\u003eOne of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2024 \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e One of \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e's Best Books We've Read in 2024 \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A bright new voice in fiction…A genuine young talent, one who deftly palpates the dark areas of human psyches…we might be staring before long at [the] 'Selected Stories of Zach Williams.'\" —Dwight Garner, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFrom \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eParis Review\u003c\/i\u003e contributor Zach Williams comes a striking and savage debut story collection that confronts parenthood, mortality, and life’s broken promises.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith exquisite prose and a lacerating wit, \u003ci\u003eBeautiful Days \u003c\/i\u003eholds a mirror to the many absurdities of being human and refuses to let us look away.\u003cb\u003eOne of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2024\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e's Best Books We've Read in 2024 So Far\u003cb\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eOne of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of Publisher's Weekly's 10 Promising Fiction Debuts of Spring 2024\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"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, Williams understands how unnervingly intense and unknowable children can be. Like J.G. Ballard, he savors postapocalyptic vistas. But Williams is his own writer…He pushes you slowly off into the night, then down long embankments…we might be staring before long at [the] 'Selected Stories of Zach Williams.'\"  \u003cb\u003e—Dwight Garner, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Beautiful Days\u003c\/i\u003e is one of the year’s best debuts. . .a glorious creepfest reminiscent of speculative collections by Carmen Maria Machado, Mariana Enríquez and other children of Lovecraft....Williams sees beyond newspaper headlines to a world cleaved apart by forces we’ve unleashed, blinkered by arrogance and greed. . .\u003ci\u003eBeautiful Days \u003c\/i\u003eis the spear tip of his potential. This writer’s got talent to burn.” \u003cb\u003e—Hamilton Cain, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Nothing thrills a book reviewer more than a debut book so electrifying, so original, such an auspicious announcement of a major talent, that it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. I am delighted to say that Zach Williams’s story collection, \u003ci\u003eBeautiful Days,\u003c\/i\u003e is such a debut… The stories’ subjects seem to have bubbled up from a fertile, teeming, uninhibited subconscious, and yet the prose is precise, musical, and exquisitely calibrated for maximum effect.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“At least once every year, a debut short-story collection comes along and gets under my skin. . . In 2024, that collection is \u003ci\u003eBeautiful Days. . .\u003c\/i\u003ea subtle and speculative barn-burner that fans of Stephen King and Ling Ma will devour.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eEsquire\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Remarkable. . . Revelatory. . . Williams's tales deserve favorable comparison to the stories of Wells Tower and George Saunders.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e *starred review*\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eBeautiful Days\u003c\/i\u003e. . .makes the case for a new adage: strange fiction can help us tell the truth....a writer who will be around for a long time.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eChicago Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There’s a quiet intensity to the way Zach Williams crafts short fiction, like a coiled spring ready to snap, or a snake about to strike. . .His prose is precise, witty and full of vivid imagery, with a gift for marrying tension and humanity that calls to mind John Cheever or Shirley Jackson. That makes Beautiful Days a powerful, unsettling, genuinely thrilling collection, one that singles Williams out as a must-read voice in fiction.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBookPage \u003c\/i\u003e*starred review*\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“A brilliant debut.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eJeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of \u003ci\u003eThe Marriage Plot\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Zach Williams is a brilliant, singular, deep, and deeply entertaining writer. You will continue to think about and feel these stories long after you have finished reading them. They will change you.” \u003cb\u003e—Jonathan Safran Foer, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestseller and author of \u003ci\u003eHere I Am\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Beautiful Days\u003c\/i\u003e is a remarkable collection. These stories are full of irony and absurdity, but are never sleight, glib or waggish. Zach Williams paints us into every story with quick, deft strokes and then unfolds, with a scarily confident hand, the rest of the canvas, full of surprises and truths and stuff we never imagined.” —\u003cb\u003ePercival Everett, Booker Prize finalist and author of \u003ci\u003eJames\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Beautiful Days\u003c\/i\u003e brings a reader though strange and grounded lands on just the other side of reality. You will come through changed, shaken, thoughtful, and totally amazed.” \u003cb\u003e—Samantha Hunt, author of\u003ci\u003e The Unwritten Book\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“\u003c\/i\u003e[Zach Williams's] beautiful, disquieting stories are profound in the true meaning of that word—they go deep. He's a major talent...an exciting debut.” \u003cb\u003e—Hari Kunzru, author of \u003ci\u003eWhite Tears\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eRed Pill\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eBlue Ruin\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eBeautiful Days\u003c\/i\u003e contains elegant mysteries, and the book stays in the mind long after you've read it.” \u003cb\u003e—Charles Baxter, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Sun Collective\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The visionary weirdness of these stories feels hauntingly attuned to our time.” \u003cb\u003e—Elizabeth Tallent, author of \u003ci\u003eScratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Wide-eyed on the world and its often mystical ways, there’s a sparkle of magic and mystery in every elegant sentence of these wondrously curious, unsettling, and absolutely original stories. I devoured them with pure delight—and with awe for this writer’s singular imagination and talent.\" \u003cb\u003e—Chang-rae Lee, author of \u003ci\u003eMy Year Abroad\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] bracing debut. . . Much like George Saunders, Williams develops setups rooted in equal parts absurdity and peril. . . determined to metaphorically work through the fear and feelings of disassociation from modern life. . . Lyrical, well-crafted, offbeat yarns.”\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Provocative.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eBooklist\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eZACH WILLIAMS is a Jones Lecturer in Fiction at Stanford University, where he previously held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. His work has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker, The Paris Review,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMcSweeney's Quarterly Concern\u003c\/i\u003e. His story \"Trial Run\" was one of three that won \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review \u003c\/i\u003ea 2023 ASME Award for Fiction. Originally from Wilmington, Delaware, he currently resides with his family in San Francisco.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48232967864549,"sku":"NP9780593685747","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593685747.jpg?v=1767722315","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/beautiful-days-isbn-9780593685747","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}