Fortune Smiles: Stories

It is impossible not to be awed by these stories. Life, marriage, love, death, are all described here in the most amazingly unexpected ways; it seems at times that Adam, like the greatest of the great writers, has some kind of supernatural facility that allows him to see through to the pitch black core of things and to create a crystalline portrait of what he witnesses

DONAL RYAN, author of the bestselling THE SPINNING HEART

Johnson packs more voice in his stories than most authors do in a novel

ESQUIRE.COM

Masterful

The Washington Post

[A] riveting collection of short stories ... darkly imagined, slightly surreal

San Jose Mercury News

[A] bold and deeply wise collection

BuzzFeed

[Adam Johnson] is always perceptive and brave; his lines always sing and strut and sizzle and hush and wash and blaze over the reader.

The New York Times Book Review

Entrancing.

O: The Oprah Magazine

[Adam Johnson] serves up six sinewy stories that shock and surprise in his edgy, inviting Fortune Smiles . . . compulsively readable.

Elle

Startlingly, blazingly original.

BookPage

Johnson has a rare combination of inventiveness, intellectual pyrotechnics and emotional sophistication . . . These stories are treasures.

BBC

Adam Johnson . . . demonstrates again his boundless imagination, his ability to capture an entire personality in a few perfectly chosen details, and his gift for making foreign territory feel utterly familiar. Johnson is willing to go into real darkness and send a beacon back from the depths of tragedy, and his voice is as inevitable and fresh as anything being written today.

Matthew Thomas

Exhilarating ... His mastery of setting simply wowed me.

THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Marked by the conflicts of heart and mind, and the exuberant quality of its compassionate prose.

THE HUFFINGTON POST

Compulsively readable ... Johnson serves up six sinewy stories that shock and surprise.

Elle Magazine

A rare combination of inventiveness, intellectual pyrotechnics and emotional sophistication ... these stories are treasures.

BBC.Com

Bittersweet, elegant, full of ward-won wisdom: this is no ordinary book either.

Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed review)

Hefty and memorable ...the stories provide one of the truest satisfactions of reading: the opportunity to sing into worlds we otherwise know little or nothing about.

Starred Kirkus Review

Unputdownable is an overused word, but at their best these stories are completely gripping.

Sunday Times

...formidable, meaty tales that cling on and don’t let go.

The Independent

Ironic, witty, super-intelligent

The Times

Terrific. Shows exactly why Johnson is rated as one of the hottest writers of his generation.

Mail on Sunday