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Please Don’t Touch the Body: Stories
Not yet published
Expected 14 Jul 26Win a free print copy of this book!
0 days and 11:07:05
20 copies available
U.S. and Canada only
“A magnificent debut” (Laila Lalami) that explores loneliness and community, religion and repression, and the pleasure and pain of being a woman.
"In these carefully crafted stories, lonely people come face to face with the strange or the unsettling, leading to messy, horny, funny, and ultimately profound complications." -Laila Lalami, author of The Dream Hotel and The Other Americans
The 11 stories in Please Don't Touch the Body are at once dry and comic, grounded and surreal as they play deftly with genre and expectation to explore human alienation.
In the collection's first story, a Japanese woman finds healing in a secret life as a sex advice columnist after being fetishized by her white husband for decades, while in the fourth story, Ronald Reagan is reincarnated as a puppy and must cope with being squeezed, dropped, and controlled by his young, queer owner. And in “Thank You No Thank You” a young woman who grew up in a cloistered religious community and escaped to a liberal law school grapples with the rules she learned in childhood, the rules of her new life, and her actual desires as she vacations with her long-term boyfriend.
Together these inventive, emotionally rich stories reveal an incredible new vision and voice and a writer to watch.
"In these carefully crafted stories, lonely people come face to face with the strange or the unsettling, leading to messy, horny, funny, and ultimately profound complications." -Laila Lalami, author of The Dream Hotel and The Other Americans
The 11 stories in Please Don't Touch the Body are at once dry and comic, grounded and surreal as they play deftly with genre and expectation to explore human alienation.
In the collection's first story, a Japanese woman finds healing in a secret life as a sex advice columnist after being fetishized by her white husband for decades, while in the fourth story, Ronald Reagan is reincarnated as a puppy and must cope with being squeezed, dropped, and controlled by his young, queer owner. And in “Thank You No Thank You” a young woman who grew up in a cloistered religious community and escaped to a liberal law school grapples with the rules she learned in childhood, the rules of her new life, and her actual desires as she vacations with her long-term boyfriend.
Together these inventive, emotionally rich stories reveal an incredible new vision and voice and a writer to watch.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
224 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication July 14, 2026
3223 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 15, 2026
Thank you to Netgalley for the arc! This is actually a 3.5 star for me. Lovely little collection of stories that I devoured within a few hours. My favorite story was definitely the title story, “Please don’t touch the body”. The themes of love, grief, and repressed trauma really resonated with me, and I thought the writing was beautifully subtle. Additionally, each story had such a unique cast of characters and plot. I will definitely read more from this author in the future!
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January 5, 2026Not yet published • Expected 14 Jul 26
March 26, 2026
March 2026 ARC: Sensual, moving, and utterly bizarre. This is the kind of story collection you recommend to a queer friend that you secretly have a crush on.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews