"A scintillating collection of short stories and a novella that encompass pathos and hilarity and range from breathtakingly succinct yet richly faceted tales, like the diamonds that figure in several unexpectedly connected stories, to longer works iridescent with tangible and psychological detail."βBooklist
"In elegant prose, Weber offers intimate views on her characters' inner lives. At its best, this offers an ode to the universality of change."βPublishers Weekly
"Weber's genius in these startling, haunting stories is to find the momentary connections in things that make up or derail a life, be it an artichoke and a dead woman's earrings, or a plant and a hospice worker. Written in prose as dazzling and finecrafted as diamonds, Weber's stories show us ordinary people in extraordinary moments, doing what the best literature doesβthey make us look at our own world differently."βCaroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World
At the heart of every story in this collection, Katharine Weber has located a compelling character in medias res, at a moment when situation, desire, and identity are intersecting and sometimes colliding. Children go door to door selling poison mushrooms. An elderly New Yorker on the brink of losing her freedom bolts for one last dignified adventure. A girl is employed to babysit a sleeping baby she is forbidden to see. In the title novella, lonely children roaming their Connecticut neighborhood discover a forgotten bomb shelter, which they make their secret headquarters. Jane of Hearts offers Katharine Weber's readers a lively assortment of her short fiction, each story a precise and nuanced investigation of its moments.
"With eloquence, wit and wisdom, Katharine Weber transports her readers from Madagascar to Connecticut, from jury duty to a feast of poisonous mushrooms. In the best way, I never knew what I would find on the next page in this wonderfully engaging, vividly peopled collection."βMargot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field and The Hidden Machinery
"Katharine Weber's trademark intelligence and wit are on full, dazzling display in her not-to-be missed, career-spanning collection, . Secret family histories, childhood games turned dangerous, moments imbued with fierce, unexpected consequences, inform these compulsively readable, razor-sharp stories. A triumph."βKate Walbert, author of She Was Like That and His Favorites