Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin

Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin

"Berlin probably deserved a Pulitzer Prize." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times

New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by The Boston Globe, Kirkus, and Lit Hub. Named a Fall Read by Buzzfeed, ELLE, TIME, Nylon, The Boston Globe, Vulture, Newsday, HuffPost, Bustle, The A.V. Club, The Millions, BUST, Reinfery29, Fast Company and MyDomaine.

A collection of previously uncompiled stories from the short-story master and literary sensation Lucia Berlin

In 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published A Manual for Cleaning Women, a posthumous story collection by a relatively unknown writer, to wild, widespread acclaim. It was a New York Times bestseller; the paper's Book Review named it one of the Ten Best Books of 2015; and NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other outlets gave the book rave reviews.

The book's author, Lucia Berlin, earned comparisons to Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Alice Munro, and Anton Chekhov. Evening in Paradise is a careful selection from Berlin's remaining stories--twenty-two gems that showcase the gritty glamour that made readers fall in love with her. From Texas to Chile, Mexico to New York City, Berlin finds beauty in the darkest places and darkness in the seemingly pristine. Evening in Paradise is an essential piece of Berlin's oeuvre, a jewel-box follow-up for new and old fans.

Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) produced outstanding but infrequent work. Her stories are inspired by her early years in numerous Western mining towns, her glamorous adolescent years in Santiago, Chile, three failed marriages, a lifetime alcoholism problem, her years in Berkeley, New Mexico, and Mexico City, and the various professions she later did to support her writing and her four boys. During the 1990s, she was sober and writing regularly that she accepted a visiting writer's position at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she was quickly promoted to associate professor. She moved to Southern California in 2001 because her health was failing and she wanted to be closer to her boys.