Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller A People Book of the Week, Book of the Month Club selection, and Best of Fall in Good Housekeeping, PopSugar, The Washington Post, New York Post, Shondaland, CNN, and more! “[A] quirky, big-hearted novel…Wry, wise, and often laugh-out-loud funny, it’s a wholly original story that delivers pure pleasure.” —People From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove comes a charming, poignant novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined. Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage. There’s a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can’t seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom, and you’ve got the worst group of hostages in the world. Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next. Rich with Fredrik Backman’s “pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature” (Shelf Awareness), Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious times.

#1 New York Times bestseller From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and “writer of astonishing depth” (The Washington Times) comes a poignant comedy about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined. Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths. First is Zara, a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else until tragedy changed her life. Now, she’s obsessed with visiting open houses to see how ordinary people live—and, perhaps, to set an old wrong to right. Then there’s Roger and Anna-Lena, an Ikea-addicted retired couple who are on a never-ending hunt for fixer-uppers to hide the fact that they don’t know how to fix their own failing marriage. Julia and Ro are a young lesbian couple and soon-to-be parents who are nervous about their chances for a successful life together since they can’t agree on anything. And there’s Estelle, an eighty-year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by a masked bank robber waving a gun in her face. And despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasn’t really come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband really isn’t outside parking the car. As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people. Rich with Fredrik Backman’s “pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature” (Shelf Awareness), Anxious People’s whimsical plot serves up unforgettable insights into the human condition and a gentle reminder to be compassionate to all the anxious people we encounter every day.

Reid & Williams are "funny as hell."--Amy Morrison, founder of Pregnant Chicken Feeling anxious? Who isn't! Your most irrational (and sometimes rational) fears are hilarious fodder for this sharp and relatable activity book. These days, anxiety is simply part of the human experience. Part journal, part coloring book, part weird coping mechanisms, and part compendium of soothing facts, The Big Activity Book for Anxious People will be an outlet for anyone who wants to take a break from reality, laugh through her fears, and realize with every page that she is not alone--and to help her figure out what to do when it's 3AM and she's wide awake worrying about whether she cc'ed the right "Bob" on that email. (Probably.) Activities include: Fun Facts about Aging! Public Speaking: A Diagram Your Hotel Room Carpet: A Petri Dish of Horrors Obscure Diseases You Probably Don't Have Zen Mantras For The Anxiously Inclined Soothing Facts about Hand Sanitizer On a bad day, try coloring in the soothing grandma. On a really bad day, find step-by-step instructions on how to build an underground bunker. Reid and Williams want everyone to remember that they're in good company: anxious people are some of the funniest and most interesting and creative humans on the planet. (They know, because they are two of them.)

A curmudgeon hides a terrible personal loss beneath a cranky and short-tempered exterior while clashing with new neighbors, a boisterous family whose chattiness and habits lead to unexpected friendship.

In the spirit of his New York Times bestseller Love Poems for Married People and Love Poems for People with Children, as well as his wildly popular New Yorker pieces, Thurber Prize-winner John Kenney presents a hilarious new collection of poetry for anxious people. With the same brilliant wit and hilarious realism that made Love Poems for Married People and Love Poems for People with Children such hits, John Kenney is back with a brand new collection of poems, this time taking on one of the most common feelings in our day-and-age: anxiety. Kenney covers it all, from awkward social interactions and insomnia to nervous ticks and writing and rewriting that email.

Anxiety. It's out there and it's messing things up for us all. But for some of us, it's really messing things up. As a trans woman, Freiya Benson is super anxious a lot of the time - from feeling unsafe in social situations, to worrying about how she looks and sounds - but over the years she has developed a toolkit for managing anxiety as a trans and/or non-binary person. Exploring specific triggers such as coming out, gender dysphoria, voice anxiety, transphobia, validity, passing and gender expectations, this guide will help you to identify and understand your triggers and anxiety, and build the resilience you need to handle life's challenges. With advice and personal stories from a range of trans people, this book highlights the importance of self-care and being proud of who you are and highlights how trans people can flourish both individually and as a community when their anxiety is no longer in charge.

“Propulsive . . . The novel’s chaotic sprawl, black humor and madcap digressions make it a thrilling rejoinder to the tidy story arcs [of] most crime fiction.” —The Wall Street Journal Winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Best Debut Novel Named a Best Book of the Year in the Wall Street Journal, Houston Chronicle, and Philadelphia City Paper A Naked Singularity tells the story of Casi, born to Colombian immigrants, who lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan as a public defender—one who, tellingly, has never lost a trial. Never. In the book, we watch what happens when his sense of justice and even his sense of self begin to crack—and how his world then slowly devolves. A huge, ambitious novel in the vein of DeLillo, Foster Wallace, Pynchon, and even Melville, it’s told in a distinct, frequently hilarious voice, with a striking human empathy at its center. Its panoramic reach takes readers through crime and courts, immigrant families and urban blight, media savagery and media satire, scatology and boxing, and even a breathless heist worthy of any crime novel. If Infinite Jest stuck a pin in the map of mid-90s culture and drew our trajectory from there, A Naked Singularity does the same for the feeling of surfeit, brokenness, and exhaustion that permeates our civic and cultural life today. In the opening sentence of William Gaddis’s A Frolic of His Own, a character sneers, “Justice? You get justice in the next world. In this world, you get the law.” A Naked Singularity reveals the extent of that gap, and lands firmly on the side of those who are forever getting the law. “A great American novel.” —Toronto Star