"Berlin probably deserved a Pulitzer Prize." -Dwight Garner, The New York Times

New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by The Boston Globe, Kirkus, and Lit Hub. Named a Fall Read by Buzzfeed, ELLE, TIME, Nylon, The Boston Globe, Vulture, Newsday, HuffPost, Bustle, The A.V. Club, The Millions, BUST, Reinfery29, Fast Company and MyDomaine.

A collection of previously uncompiled stories from the short-story master and literary sensation Lucia Berlin
In 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published A Manual for Cleaning Women, a posthumous story collection by a relatively unknown writer, to wild, widespread acclaim. It was a New York Times bestseller; the paper's Book Review named it one of the Ten Best Books of 2015; and NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other outlets gave the book rave reviews.
The book's author, Lucia Berlin, earned comparisons to Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Alice Munro, and Anton Chekhov. Evening in Paradise is a careful selection from Berlin's remaining stories-twenty-two gems that showcase the gritty glamour that made readers fall in love with her. From Texas to Chile, Mexico to New York City, Berlin finds beauty in the darkest places and darkness in the seemingly pristine. Evening in Paradise is an essential piece of Berlin's oeuvre, a jewel-box follow-up for new and old fans.

CONTENTS
Foreword: The Story Is the Thing, by Mark Berlin vii
The Musical Vanity Boxes 3
Sometimes in Summer 20
Andado: A Gothic Romance 29
Dust to Dust 57
Itinerary 62
Lead Street, Albuquerque 71
Noël. Texas. 1956 83
The Adobe House with a Tin Roof 90
A Foggy Day 112
Cherry Blossom Time 120
Evening in Paradise 126
La Barca de la Ilusión 141
My Life Is an Open Book 158
The Wives 170
Noël, 1974 182
The Pony Bar, Oakland 196
Daughters 197
Rainy Day 203
Our Brother's Keeper 204
Lost in the Louvre 211
Sombra 220
Luna Nueva 232
A Note on Lucia Berlin 237
Acknowledgments 243

Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) worked brilliantly but sporadically throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Her stories are inspired by her early childhood in various Western mining towns; her glamorous teenage years in Santiago, Chile; three failed marriages; a lifelong problem with alcoholism; her years spent in Berkeley, New Mexico, and Mexico City; and the various jobs she later held to support her writing and her four sons. Sober and writing steadily by the 1990s, she took a visiting writer's post at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1994 and was soon promoted to associate professor. In 2001, in failing health, she moved to Southern California to be near her sons. She died in 2004 in Marina del Rey. Her posthumous collection, A Manual for Cleaning Women, was named one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2015.