Greyhounds

Poignant and humorous, Greyhounds follows characters desperately navigating desire, obsession, and the minefields of power dynamics in relationships of all stripes.

A couple buys a Betta fish in the hopes it will salvage their drowning marriage. A young girl, envious of her friend's terminal illness, begins fabricating symptoms of her own. Months after a fatal collision, a husband and wife begin driving incessantly, haunted by the memory of the teenage boy they killed. And while her widowed neighbor watches, a woman who has long struggled with hoarding finds her life forever changed when she begins acquiring greyhounds.

Unflinching and audacious, Smith-Stevens's debut short story collection compels readers to reckon with the familiar-the very self-through a new lens, a treasure for fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Marie-Helene Bertino.