Welcome to HAPPY HOUR, Alison Baker's third collection of quirky, heart-breaking stories. With her trademark humor and distinctive opening lines, she drops us right into the lives of characters yearning for connection in a world they never expected to inhabit. An itinerant cosmetics salesman falls in love with a wilderness guide twenty years his junior. A physician falls in love with a faith healer. A young woman's life is utterly changed by her brother's traumatic brain injury. And a middle-aged daughter finds both grief and hilarity in her elderly parents' nursing home life. The characters here may be astonished to find themselves in midlife, but the issues they face are timeless: aging parents and thankless children; love and death; the inevitable losses -- and the unexpected joys -- that come with age. "Baker's humor never outweighs her compassion for the eccentric ways of the human heart." -- CONTRA COSTA TIMES "If the world is looking a bit mundane, try seeing it through Alison Baker's eyes." -- THE BELLINGHAM HERALD * Runner-up, Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award * Finalist, Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction