American Innovations: Stories

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux) In Galchen’s American Innovations, female narrators tell stories inspired by canonical male-narrated tales like James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” The result is an exuberant short story collection that The New York Times says is like “watching a crisscross firework that shoots up like a normal shell, but explodes in unpredictable directions.” Galchen writes for The New Yorker and is the author of the novel Atmospheric Disturbances.