Atavists: Stories by Lydia Millet Arcadia And they’re both on balmy

And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives

when financial misfortune strikes Lucy and her family during the Depression

with an irresistible heroine who wants only to be free of the bonds placed on her gender and claim her own fate

and the only dead body she's dealt with lately is that of her daughter's pet goldfish

a cephalopod specialist

Atavists: Stories by Lydia Millet Arcadia And they’re both on balmyFinalist for the 2025 Story Prize A Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2025 One of NPR's "Books We Love" for 2025 A Chicago Public Library Must Read Book of 2025 An Electric Literature Best Short Story Collection of 2025 A Financial Times Best Summer Book of 2025 Very few writers can make the apocalypse hilarious and sentimental. Stuart Kelly, Scotsman A fast moving, heartbreaking collection of short fiction from "the American writer