Sam Lipsyte Books in Order

These stories follow desperate people through addiction, memory, cruelty and uncertain hopes. A son discovers his dead mother’s morphine, former campers revisit past wrongdoing and a man seeks connection in Times Square, each navigating morally ambiguous ground.

Two doctors diagnose an otherwise healthy man with a fatal condition that has no physical cause. Their eagerness to name and publicise his supposed disease turns a case of profound boredom into an absurd encounter with mortality and medical ambition.

An unsuccessful former student sends brutally candid updates to his high-school alumni newsletter, rejecting its parade of achievements. Lewis Miner’s confessions expose disappointment, longing and resentment in a life that has failed to resemble the success stories around him.

An unemployed university fundraiser gets a chance to recover his job by securing a donation from an old classmate. But the prospective benefactor’s demands draw him into a costly bargain, testing his already strained family life and self-respect.

Stories introduce people confronting absurdity, desire and failure, from a boy pursuing self-knowledge through food to a troubled male doula. Lipsyte follows their strange choices through everyday humiliations and startling situations that mingle comedy with unease.

A failed comedian becomes a mindfulness guru whose method attracts followers in an anxious, divided America. As his influence grows, a struggling couple searches for help with marriage and parenthood amid opportunists, unstable alliances and a wider sense of impending collapse.

In 1993 New York, a musician searches for the missing singer who vanished with his prized bass before an important gig. The hunt leads into real-estate crime and a possible connection to the death of his punk-rock mentor.

Hiding after violent acts committed with the Planning Committee, former magazine writer Wyatt Sardo writes an account for his teenage children. His confession confronts fatherhood, technological upheaval and the choices that turned his disillusionment into catastrophe.