Books in the Iowa Short Fiction Award series

In the spirit of Tove Jansson, William Blake, and Calvin & Hobbes, The Lightning Jar contains a volatile mix of innocence and experience, faith and doubt, nostalgia and a sense of all there is to gain by accepting reality on fresh terms.

The characters in Happy Like This are smart girls and professional women who search for happiness in roles and relationships that are often unscripted or unconventional. The ten shimmering stories in this collection offer deeply felt, often humorous meditations on the complexity of choice and the ambiguity of happiness.

In Sari Rosenblatt's collection, by turns tender and hilarious, we see fathers who are bullies and nervous watchdogs, haunted by their own pasts and fear of the future they may never see. Rosenblatt's comic sensibility, so present in these stories, entertains and consoles, while seeming to say to her readers: you might as well laugh.

How does one live a good life? If you're Pat Graves, you change your name to Cecile Collette, move to Cleveland, and join three churches and the Rotary Club. For Cecile, it may be possible to make Michigan and everything else she touches beautiful, but she'll come to grief when she tries to redesign another human being.

From a lightning death on an isolated peak to the intrigues of a small town orchestra, the glimmering stories in this debut collection explore how nature - damaged, fierce, and unpredictable - worms its way into our lives.

Moving between the American South and Mexico, these stories explore how immigrant and native characters are shaped by absent family and geography.