Winner of the Autumn House Press Fiction Prize, selected by Alexandra Kleeman, Adam O’Fallon Price’s unflinchingly honest and deliciously existential stories explore the ways our deepest hunger teases us toward both our best selves and endings we should have avoided.

Objects of Desire, Price’s debut short story collection, is filled with people driven by restless longings and unattainable desires—pushed to act by needs only half-understood—all the while picking up unintended bedfellows and conspirators: A resentful brother grapples with the responsibility of bone marrow donation for his dying sibling. A down-on-his-luck artist chases his dog through a cornfield and into the home of dangerous strangers. A college women’s soccer goalie takes her pain out on her opponents, as she struggles to process her childhood and forgive her mother.

Price shows us how the aching, often desperate, pull of wanting can unsettle our lives. The characters in this collection are consistently reaching for something more, only to miss the mark in quiet but irreversible ways.

Praise for Objects of Desire

“Tremendously funny and deeply felt, Adam O’Fallon Price channels the voices of characters suspended between crisis and catharsis, hovering somewhere above rock bottom, wandering the maze of their own desires and dreams. In their tenderness, these stories demonstrate the special power of the short form to hoist up the heaviness of life, to give lightness and wit to what would drag us down. But in their pathos, the struggle of Price’s characters to see their way to being a just slightly better version of themselves, they give heft to experiences that we might otherwise prefer to discard, illuminating a rare and peculiar kind of beauty. Objects of Desire is a wonderful gift, from beginning to end.”
—Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun

“Adam O’Fallon Price renders his characters with depth and nuance in each of these brilliant stories and you are pulled so deeply into the particular nature of their struggles that it shocks you to realize how invested you’ve become in the small possibilities of grace that Price leads us toward. Objects of Desire works within this perfect triangle of sadness, humor, and tenderness, and I’m amazed at the wonder of this collection.”
—Kevin Wilson, author of Now Is Not the Time to Panic

“With curiosity, humor, and in pristine prose, Adam O’Fallon Price follows his characters down to their most desperate hours, allowing them quiet revelations and occasional grace. Each of these stories is a tightly plotted, psychologically rich marvel. Price is among the best story writers of our time.”
—Emily Adrian, author of Seduction Theory

“Here are eleven stories of addiction, ambition, and self-delusion—of distinctly modern malaise and all-American yearning—told in a style as timeless as it is powerful. His prose taut as a bowstring and his characters doomed to FAFO, Adam O’Fallon Price is an heir to John Cheever, William Trevor, and Ann Beattie. Bleakly comic and full of stinging insight, this is a collection to covet.”
—Justin Taylor, author of Reboot

Adam O’Fallon Price is the author of two novels, The Grand Tour (Doubleday, 2016) and The Hotel Neversink (Tin House Books, 2019), winner of the 2020 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. His short fiction has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, and Granta, and many other places. He lives in Carrboro, NC, and teaches fiction writing at his alma mater, the University […]

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