A cat summons the ghosts of a woman's former lovers, and God decides humans can be replaced. Rachel Khong's stories set love, dating and grief loose in worlds both familiar and slightly off true.

Readical Key Points

• Ten stories by the author of Real Americans, a New York Times bestseller, and Goodbye, Vitamin
• Starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal and Booklist
• Subjects include dating in one's thirties, marriage, the pressure to have or not have children, race and Asian American identity, grief and death
• Content note: includes profanity and sexual themes
• Hardcover, 240 pages; Knopf, 2026

The premises run from the nearly ordinary to the openly absurd: a factory worker befriends the sex doll she is supposed to sell, and the government doses every citizen so that everyone else appears to share their race and gender. Beneath the surreal setups, the stories keep returning to love in its many shapes, from romances that should not happen to friendships that last a lifetime, and to what it means to be Asian American and a woman.

It suits readers of literary short fiction with a speculative edge and readers of Khong's novels. Some doors in these stories open on the everyday and some on the absurd; behind nearly every one, someone is working out how to love.

About the Author

Rachel Khong's novels are Goodbye, Vitamin, which won the California Book Award for First Fiction, and Real Americans, a New York Times bestseller. She founded The Ruby, a San Francisco space for women and nonbinary writers and artists, in 2018.

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