Riveting Reads for Busy People

A contemporary master and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Schutt writes stories that don't have an ounce of melodrama in them—they feel unusually alive and honest—and few writers capture bereavement with Schutt's precision and elegance: "The permanence of his absence is a noise she hears when she listens to how quiet," she writes of a widow remembering her husband. Her brisk, clean and unaffected sentences radiate with suggestions of bigger stories left untold. In "The Dot Sisters," she sweeps through decades in two sisters' lives in less than two pages. "Be your sweet, strange, selfish self," one character implores, and the women in this slim, dark and satisfying collection are facing the challenge of doing exactly that. Schutt's graceful language and stark candor make for a surprisingly charming read.