About the Book
Brought to you by Penguin.
One of our best writers, Lauren Groff returns with a fierce new story collection, her first since the award-winning and bestselling Florida.
Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region - from New England to Florida to California - these nine stories reflect and expand upon a single shared theme: the ceaseless battle between the dark and light in all of us.
Among those caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling; a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult; a mother blinded by the loss of her family; and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by human fallibility, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.
Precise, surprising and provocative, anchored by profound insight into human nature, Brawler reveals the repeated fracture points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and survival. It is a timeless, stunning achievement from one of the very best short story writers working today.
Praise for Lauren Groff
"Her writing has a timeless quality" The Times on The Vaster Wilds
"Groff's writing is muscular and precise, her themes wildly resonant" Sunday Times on Matrix
"An audacious piece of storytelling, full of passion, wisdom and magic" Sarah Waters on Matrix
"It's as brightly lit as an illuminated manuscript" Naomi Alderman on Matrix
"One of its stories is a bracing read; together they form a masterpiece" Stylist on Florida
"She's a writer whose turn of phrase can stop you in your tracks" Financial Times on Florida
"Easily the year's best story collection" Vogue on Florida
© Lauren Groff 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026
About the Author :
Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of five novels, including Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and two other story collections, including Florida. Winner of The Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, she has also been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere, and her books have been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband own the independent bookstore The Lynx. Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of five novels, including Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and two other story collections, including Florida. Winner of The Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, she has also been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere, and her books have been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband own the independent bookstore The Lynx.
Review :
Few collections have an opener as powerful and instantly classic as Brawler's 'The Wind' ... For most writers, [it] would be an impossible act to follow, and yet every story here continues a conversation about secrets, hopes, fears and the persistence of love in the face of it all. ... Brawler captures a towering talent and follows protagonists caught in the undertow of their messiest emotions. As one character says, “in every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death”. Groff’s bargain with the reader is simple, and impossible to refuse: instead of easy epiphanies, she offers glimpses of acute clarity, meaning or happiness. They will not repeat; but they are enough to carry you through a life.
I'm in awe at how Groff conjures a whole world in each brilliant story.
These are stories of fracture and survival, of the fulcrums on which lives tilt. On finishing Brawler, the world felt more densely peopled, richer with stories. Groff reminds us of the myriad human galaxies all around us, spinning off brightly into the dark.
You'll want to put this short-story collection at the top of your list. The characters you'll meet here balance responsibility with human fallibility across locations, years, and identities. You'll walk away feeling more connected to other people, all of whom are simply trying, and with more compassion for yourself.
Nine tales with a common theme: characters' grappling with their better and worse instincts. Groff has a gift for capturing human nature and the compulsions that drive us.
It's truly a joy to be alive at the same time as someone whose work is so consistently excellent.
Groff is a great writer. Her stories chew you up and spit you out and leave you feeling immensely satisfied.
Groff's latest collection crisscrosses America from the 1950s to the present day in nine stories about troubled mothers, damaged daughters, ruined siblings and marriages that look like they're heading for the rocks. The opening story, 'The Wind', is an emotional gut - punch as a woman attempts to escape her violent cop husband. The moving 'Brawler' sees diver Sara ready to fight the world as she copes with her neurotic, ill mother, while the slow poison of privilege infects the lives of alcoholic, unpredictable Chip and his protective sister in the compelling 'What's The Time, Mr. Wolf?'.
In the coiling dread and frank feminism of her work, this incandescent author makes clear with her newest fiction why she won the 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. This audacious collection surprises readers with the vivid lives few of us notice.
A gorgeous collection about families transformed by desperate circumstances … Groff sketches her characters with scalpel-like precision … Each of these heartbreaking tales will linger in the reader’s mind.
