With a voice that vibrates on the page, Lydia Mathis’ debut collection is set in the American South and her sharply drawn, authentic characters shine a light on what we’re willing to do to ourselves and to others in service of our desires. The madness in the ordinary rules here: an overworked college safety officer is confronted by a bloody figure who walks into her office; a sex worker runs into a client en route to a parent-teacher conference; a teacher is plagued by a ghost determined to tidy her apartment.

Desperate Bodies depicts the fragility, strength, and unruliness of Black women and girls’ bodies and the power in being honest about their desires. In unflinching prose, Mathis takes a frank and determined look at what it means to be subjected to imbalances of power through the perspectives of young girls and adult women. With surprising turns and a touch of the supernatural, these stories refuse to look away from the most honest, raw moments of womanhood.

Visceral and unyielding, Desperate Bodies is a thrillingly dark ride that introduces Lydia Mathis as a major new writer.

Praise for Desperate Bodies:

“Lydia Mathis’s stunning debut collection broke my heart from the very first page . . . then proceeded to take me on the wildest ride of my reading life. These exquisitely written stories are fresh, audacious, and tender. Desperate Bodies is literary shock and awe at its finest.”—Deesha Philyaw, author of The Confessions of First Lady Freeman and The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

“Mathis’s stories have an easy resonance, a tangible signature one can recognize, delight in, and mourn with as they move through the body, creating a stunning gravity that lingers long after the last word.”—Dantiel W. Moniz, author of Milk Blood Heat

“What does it mean to have a body? The stories in Lydia Mathis’s enthralling debut collection examine this question and all the messy viscera it invites in its answer. Whether her female protagonists are encountering ghosts, murderers, betrayals, or the indignity of a bad date, they remain tenaciously true to their desires. Desperate Bodies is a bold and original take on contemporary womanhood.”—Lena Valencia, author of Mystery Lights