Brawler: Stories

Brawler: Stories

By Lauren Groff 

Riverhead Books, 2026. 275 pages. Fiction. 

Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region--from New England to Florida to California--these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans' dark and light angels.

I love short story collections because in a short 5 pages you can fall in love with a character, become invested in a plot and feel the story deeply. And then it's over. Lauren Groff is a talented author with the ability to hook you in just a few sentences. These stories are character driven and speak so much about the human condition. Time for me to read everything Lauren Groff has written.

If you like Brawler, you might also like:

A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories 

By Lucia Berlin Farrar

Straus and Giroux, 2015. 403 pages. Fiction. 

With her trademark blend of humor and melancholy, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday--uncovering moments of grace in the cafeterias and Laundromats of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Northern California upper classes, and from the perspective of a cleaning woman alone in a hotel dining room in Mexico City. 

You Have a Friend in 10A 

By Maggie Shipstead 

Alfred A. Knopf, 2022. 253 pages. Fiction. 

In this collection of stories, Maggie Shipstead dives into eclectic and vivid settings, from an Olympic village to a deathbed in Paris to a Pacific atoll, and illuminating a cast of indelible characters, Shipstead traverses ordinary and unusual realities with cunning, compassion, and wit. In "Acknowledgments," a male novelist reminisces bitterly on the woman who inspired his first novel, attempting to make peace with his humiliations before the book goes to print. In "The Cowboy Tango," spanning decades in the open country of Montana, a triangle of love and self-preservation plays out among an aging rancher called the Otter, his nephew, and a young woman named Sammy who works the horses.

JK