5 Books That Will Surprise You

Knight's loosely connected stories are set in Mobile Bay, Alabama, and his characters hail from so-called good Southern families. Bound by convention and manners, their lives are suffused with what one narrator calls "the unspeakable misgivings of contentment." The spectrum runs from a boy with an impossible crush ("that blissful ache that welled up in his chest at the sight of her barefooting across the dock, the feeling a distant cousin of nostalgia, as if he'd already won and loved and lost her") to a widow nearing the end of her life ("What she felt was a more complicated alchemy of emotion, equal parts grief and loneliness and longing, with measures of resentment and self-pity drizzled in"). Luxurious preparations for one man's 50th birthday party end in an epiphany that will leave you breathless. Knight has a deep, luscious sense for small towns and a keen eye for nuance. Although a hurricane caps this collection, what's most notable is the author's ability to capture the slightest shift in emotional atmospheric pressure.