Lucia Berlin was a short story writer with a small, devoted following during her lifetime. She rose to sudden literary fame eleven years after her death, in 2015, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux's publication of a volume of selected stories, A Manual For Cleaning Women, edited by Stephen Emerson. It hit the New York Times bestseller list and, within a few weeks, had outsold all her previous books combined.

Twenty-three stories from a widely recognized master. Each will resonate, as questions of the human condition always do, in the heart of the reader.
Lucia Berlin is widely recognized as a master of the short story. This collection captures distilled moments of crisis or epiphany, placing the protagonists in moments of stress or personal strain, and all told in an almost offhand, matter-of-fact voice.
The San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "Most of the stories in this collection are very short and very simple. They are set in the places Berlin knows best: Chile, Mexico, the Desert Southwest, and California, and they have the casual, straightforward, immediate, and intimate style that distinguishes her work. They are told in a conversational voice and they move with a swift and often lyrical economy. They capture and communicate moments of grace and cast a lovely, lazy light that lasts. Berlin is one of our finest writers and here she is at the height of her powers."
This is a collection for anyone who loves short stories or great writing of any kind.