Tenth of December

New York: Random House, 2013. SIGNED. Purchased New. NF/NF. Thirteenth printing with number line ending in 13. Signed and dated by George Saunders 2017 on the title page. The unread book is tight with solid hinges and binding and sharp tips. Clean boards slightly bowed. Tiny indentation to the middle of the front board (see photos). The textblock is clean with no writing, bookplate or markings and not BCE, ex-library or remaindered. The dust jacket is unclipped ($26.00) with faint rubbing. Protected in a new Brodart Mylar cover. 251 pages. 5 3/4" X 8 1/2" tall.

One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.

In the taut opening, "Victory Lap," a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In "Home," a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is.

Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience.