One of New York Magazine's "23 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2024" • One of VOGUE’s Best Books of the Year So Far • One of ELLE’s Best (and Most Anticipated) Fiction Books of 2024 • One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of Kirkus’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of Lilith Magazine’s “21 Books We Want to Read in 2024” From the best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. comes a funny, eye-opening tale of work in contemporary America. Every day at 3:55 a.m., members of Team Movement clock in for their shift at big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before the store opens and customers arrive. Their lives follow a familiar if grueling routine, but their real problem is that Town Square doesn’t schedule them for enough hours—most of them are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs. When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility for advancement that that implies. The members of Team Movement—including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging on to her “cool kid” status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path—band together to set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion. Adelle Waldman’s debut novel was a breakout sensation, lauded by the Los Angeles Times as an “exacting character study” with “excellent and witty prose” and described as “incisive and very funny” by the Economist and “brilliant” by both NPR’s Fresh Air and the Washington Post. In her long-awaited follow-up, Waldman brings her unparalleled wit and astute social observation to the world of modern, low-wage work. A humane and darkly comic workplace caper that shines a light on the odds low-wage workers are up against in today’s economy, Help Wanted is a funny, moving tale of ordinary people trying to make a living.

'Help Wanted is like a great nineteenth-century novel about now, at once an effervescent workplace comedy and an exploration of the psychic toll exacted by the labour market' Elif Batuman, author of The IdiotAt a superstore in a small town in upstate New York, the members of Team Movement clock in every day at 3.55 am. Under the red-eyed scrutiny of their self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty delivery trucks of mountains of merchandise, stock the shelves and stagger home (or to another poorly paid day job) before the customers arrive. When a chance for a promotion presents itself, the diverse members of Movement - among them a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging to her "cool kid" status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path - band together and set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion. Help Wanted is a darkly comic workplace drama that explores the aches and uses of solidarity, and most of all it is a deeply humane portrait of people trying, against increasingly long odds, to make a living.

Collects ten interrelated short stories set in the same university town punctuated with appearances by recurring homeless characters.

Seven months, three weeks, two days -- that's exactly how long Alexa has to establish herself in an exciting career. At twenty-one, she's determined to gallop into "the Real World with a Real Job, a Real Life, and a Real Future." Moving in with her parents and commuting from New Jersey into Manhattan is not an option -- and if she fails to find serious employment before the time runs out, it's off to teach English on the Third World island of Majuro for $100 a month! But what jobs are available for an inexperienced young woman in the Big City? Writing headlines about yeast infections for Trend magazine? Sniffing deodorants for a living? Earthworm breeder? Phone sex operator? The Real World, apparently, is not such a welcoming place. With employment opportunities growing increasingly fewer and more bizarre daily, should Alexa consider seeking some stability by moving in with her boyfriend Jared? Between her participation in a clinical sleep study for cash and her desperate attempts to become the voice of a cartoon cat in a last ditch effort to gain "respectful employment," Alexa hardly knows anymore. Maybe what she's really looking for is in the last place she ever thought she'd find it ...

Shailey loves bedtime until her father gets distracted by a new job, so she advertises for a replacement "Bedtime Storyteller" and finds herself interviewing her favorite fairytale characters.

Nathaniel Piven is a rising star in Brooklyn's literary scene. After several lean, striving years and an early life as a class-A nerd, he now (to his surprise) has a lucrative book deal, his pick of plum magazine assignments, and the attentions of many desirable women: Juliet, the hotshot business journalist; Elisa, Nate's gorgeous ex-girlfriend, now friend; Hannah, lively and fun and 'almost universally regarded as nice and smart, or smart and nice'. In this twenty-first-century literary enclave, wit and conversation are not at all dead. But is romance? In The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Adelle Waldman plunges into the psyche of a sensitive, flawed, modern man – to reveal the view of the new world from his garret window, and the view of women from his overactive mind.

In an attempt to get out of the small town she grew up in, Anne Black moves to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she takes the first job she can get her hands on - Live-In Caretaker at the Lynnhurst House.Her new home, however, is much more than she bargained for. Between the eccentric tenants, her cute, flirty boss, and the mysterious happenings on the property, Anne begins to suspect the Lynnhurst House is not your normal apartment building.