The master of suburban tragicomedy returns triumphantly with a collection of wry, tragic, hilarious stories of individuals coming up against life's complications

Dark and funny, bleak and brilliant ... David Gates makes me sick with envy -- Nick Hornby [Gates's stories are] nimbly crafted ... rendered with meticulous emotional detail and an astringent sense of the absurdities and self-indulgences of contemporary life. The New York Times A true heir to both Raymond Carver and John Cheever New York Magazine Where has David Gates been all of my life? How is it that I've missed a writer who transforms all our failures and foibles into tales so gripping they read like great mystery novels? A Hand Reached Down To Guide Me is as unflinching as fiction gets, one of those books that feels like a discovery from the first page to the last. -- Adam Ross Malice and goodness duke it out in the dark hearts of David Gates's characters ... [He] isn't one to pass judgments. He just sends devastatingly original dispatches from the heart of darkness ... It broadens the spectrum of truthfulness and emotion for which he is known [and] captures both the unfettered love and flashes of rage. -- Janet Maslin The New York Times Deliciously wicked ... The naughty musings most of us choose to ignore compel Gates's characters to act ... These people mock their demons and, when called to account, exhibit such complexity, humor and intelligence that you'll savor every page. -- Kristy Davis More magazine

David Gates lives in Missoula, Montana and Granville, New York. He teaches at the University of Montana, and in the Bennington Writing Seminars, and was an editor at Newsweek, where he specialised in music and books. He is the author of two novels, Jernigan and Preston Falls, and the story collection The Wonders of the Invisible World. Jernigan was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. Gates's short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Paris Review and Granta.