AVAILABLE NOW!

“Elizabeth Stix’s voice is dazzling – rueful, lyrical, incisive, and funny as hell. ”
—Jonathan Lethem, author of
Motherless Brooklyn

AVAILABLE NOW!

“Elizabeth Stix’s voice is dazzling – rueful, lyrical, incisive, and funny as hell. ”
—Jonathan Lethem, author of
Motherless Brooklyn

  • “Compulsively readable… deeply observational… precise, surprising and off-handedly hilarious.”

    – The Masters Review

  • “Funny and poignant... Elizabeth Stix is a true bard of modern life.”

    – Elizabeth Gonzalez James, author of The Bullet Swallower and Mona at Sea

  • “An enchanting debut.”

    – Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City

  • “An affirmation of the absurdity of life and the steadying power of love.”

    – Kathryn Ma, author of The Chinese Groove

  • “The stories here don't so much link as they fizz, in a cocktail of sweet hope and loss.”

    – Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn

  • “Stix’s offbeat debut collection... credibly portrays the indignities of modern life.”

    – Publishers Weekly

  • “Eloquent, elegant, original, memorable, and with a distinctive, narrative-driven storytelling style, ‘Things I Want Back From You’ by Elizabeth Stix is an inherently fascinating read from start to finish.”

    – Midwest Book Review

Watch the Trailer:

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About the Book:

Set in the fictional California town of San Encanto—a place where suburban angst coexists with the astonishing—a lonely wife finds her oppressive husband has become a dirigible who follows her from the sky, a neglected boy spends his summer unwinding a parasitic Guinea worm from his little sister's belly, and an aspiring life coach attends a self-actualization seminar that goes wildly off the rails. In THINGS I WANT BACK FROM YOU, Elizabeth Stix's hilarious and poignant debut of 21 linked stories, hopelessly flawed characters flail against their own insecurities, seeking one true moment of connection, and if they're lucky, winning that rarest of gifts—a second chance.

Featured News:

The San Francisco Chronicle published a profile of me and Things I Want Back from You here — the print version ran in the Sunday Datebook July 21.

Five stars from the San Francisco Book Review! "The 20 interconnected stories in Elizabeth Stix’s collection Things I Want Back from You are some of the most original I’ve read in years. I cannot stop thinking about these bizarre, dark, poignant stories."