A Better Loser

In A Better Loser, Nathan Graziano's new collection of linked short stories, his characters are losing their battles to preserve a dignity that continues to disappear in front of them. Whether facing romantic troubles, addiction, or struggling to rein in their passions, these characters will not allow their failures to define them-instead, they become "better losers." Set in Southern New Hampshire, Graziano introduces readers to a cast that includes amateur magicians, struggling musicians, hirsute giants, runaway teens, restless small-town journalists, and frustrated couples. Now, twenty-three years after Frostbite, his debut short story collection, Graziano returns with another round of working-class tales that combine wry humor and a hard-and sometimes dark-look at the relationships that define us.

Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, with his wife and a pug named Buster. This is his eleventh book. For more information, visit his website: www.nathangraziano.com

"Reading Nathan Graziano's latest collection of interlocking stories is a little like waking in a morning-after fog, with the sinking realization that the stranger crashed beside you in the bed happens to be you. It's that dire-and it's funny as hell. Graziano's eye is at once relentless and sympathetic, and his style is an accelerometer, attuned to the subtlest of emotional vibrations; he wears his fuckups, wayward kids and dysfunctional adults, like a second skin. The biggest win (to my mind) of A Better Loser is the author's skill at registering, often simultaneously, the heart-wrenching and hilarious, holding out to the bitter end the sliver of redemption-hard-won and entirely unexpected-that shines like a strand of gold amid the mass of human wreckage. Once the haze of pot smoke, booze and painkillers clears, this cast of losers will stay with you for a long, long time."-Todd Hearon, author of Do Geese See God