Night At The Fiestas - Stories

Night at the Fiestas – Stories (2015) by Kirstin Valdez Quade — Condition: Very Good (Crappy Old Books)

Kirstin Valdez Quade’s debut collection Night at the Fiestas (Norton, 2015, ISBN: 9780393242980) proves that short stories can pack the kind of wallop usually reserved for novels—or fiestas with far too much tequila. Set largely in New Mexico, these tales hum with desert heat, family secrets, Catholic guilt, unexpected tenderness, and the occasional fiesta where everything you thought was true about yourself gets scrambled under the glow of string lights.

Quade’s writing is precise and luminous; she builds whole worlds in a handful of pages. Characters stumble between devotion and betrayal, love and estrangement, the sacred and the profane. One story gives you a priest wrestling with temptation, another a teenager trying to navigate the sharp edges of class and family expectations, another a daughter unraveling her relationship with her mother. All are bound by Quade’s uncanny ability to take the ordinary and reveal the crackling strangeness humming underneath.

This particular copy is sold by the irrepressibly honest Crappy Old Books, and it’s in Very Good condition. Translation: the dust jacket (if present) still shines, the cover is clean, the spine is upright and proud, and the pages are crisp with only the gentlest whisper of previous handling. No dog-eared fiesta confetti, no spilled margarita stains, no telltale crumbs of sopapillas tucked in the margins. It’s the kind of copy you could bring as a date to an actual fiesta and not be embarrassed.

In short: Night at the Fiestas is a dazzling, funny, and haunting debut collection by one of the brightest voices in contemporary American fiction. This copy, in Very Good condition, is all set to invite you into its celebrations, complications, and revelations. Another well-kept gem from Crappy Old Books, where even fiestas end up tidy.

Keep browsing: See more Fiction books Other books by Kirstin Valdez Quade