“The ten stories gathered here are remarkable in their simplicity… With the popularity of short story collections on the rise, O’Connor’s addition to the ranks stands out and shines.” —Booklist, starred review

“The reader is immediately drawn in…as O'Connor shows, our vices are what make us so delicately and chaotically human. A catalog of imperfections neatly packaged within a book.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A Perfect Universe beautifully encapsulates our contemporary world, in the miniature globe of Los Angeles. We see ourselves in these hustlers and hopefuls, strays and survivors, characters as complex, damaged, and determined as the city itself. This is a new classic—not only of the mysterious, evergreen pull of the City of Angels, but of American fiction at large.” —James Frey, New York Times bestselling author

A piercingly emotional cycle of stories in the tradition of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Annie Proulx’s Close Range.

Welcome to the often-overlooked corners of sun-bleached Los Angeles, where a teenaged bicycle thief searches for a kidnapped boy, a young musician emerges as the lone survivor of a building collapse, and an aging actor faces the erasure of his past. There, far from the Hollywood spotlight, we also meet two sisters locked in a destructive cycle of memory and illness, coffee-shop regulars whose lives are torn apart by a stunning moment of violence, and the desperate, fraudulent writer whose fictions connect these unforgettable characters in subtle and surprising ways.

Sharply observed, exhilaratingly paced, and beautifully written, A Perfect Universe is a masterful exploration of growing up and growing old, loss and longing, identity and deception, and the search for redemption, humanity, and grace.