The collected stories / Grace Paley.

Goodbye and good luck -- A woman, young and old -- The pale pink roast -- The loudest voice -- The contest -- An interest in life -- An irrevocable diameter -- The used boy raisers -- A subject of childhood -- In time which made a monkey of us all -- The floating truth -- Wants -- Debts -- Distance -- Faith in the afternoon -- Gloomy tune -- Living -- Come on, ye sons of art -- Faith in a tree -- Samuel -- The burdened man -- Enormous changes at the last minute -- Politics -- Northeast playground -- The little girl -- A conversation with my father -- The immigrant story -- The long-distance runner -- Love -- Dreamer in a dead language -- In the garden -- Somewhere else -- Lavinia: an old story -- Friends -- At that time, or the history of a joke -- Anxiety -- In this country. but in another language, my aunt refuses to marry the men everyone wants her to -- Mother -- Ruthy and Edie -- A man told me the story of his life -- The story hearer -- This is a story about my friend George the toy inventor -- Zagrowsky tells -- The expensive moment -- Listening.

At long last, here are all of Grace Paley's classic stories collected in one volume. From her first book, The Little Disturbances of Man, published in 1959, to Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974) and Later the Same Day (1985), Grace Paley's quirky, boisterous characters and rich use of language have won her readers' hearts and secured her place as one of America's most accomplished writers. Grace Paley's stories are united by her signature interweaving of personal and political truths, by her extraordinary capacity for empathy, and by her pointed, funny depiction a the small and large events that make up city life. As her work progresses, we encounter many of the same characters and revisit the same sites, bearing witness to a community as it develops and matures, becoming part ourselves of a dense and vital world that is singular yet achingly familiar.