by Judy Shepard
First published 2013
The nineteenth installment in Shepard's ongoing fictional series examines contemporary retail environments through interconnected narratives. Store employees, managers, and customers navigate the complexities of commercial spaces that define modern consumer culture. Each vignette reveals the human dramas unfolding behind cash registers, in stockrooms, and along shopping aisles. Shepard focuses on the ordinary moments that expose deeper tensions between economic necessity and personal fulfillment. The collection captures how retail work shapes identity and relationships in an economy built around service and consumption. These stories find meaning in the mundane transactions that connect strangers across counters and create temporary communities within commercial spaces.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: interconnected-narratives, ordinary-moments
Period: Contemporary
224 pages · Hardcover · Visual Profile Books