Meet Alby, the heartbroken antihero at the center of Matt Sumell's ferocious, funny, and wrenching debut Making Nice. Fueled by heartache, fury, and the occasional pain pill from his mother's leftover stash, Alby is flailing wildly as he tries (and mostly fails) to cope with his mother's death. From his hometown on the Great South Bay to a sailboat in a Los Angeles marina, he stalks the perimeters of calamity: he punches his sister; gets drunk; picks fights; and spews insults at children, slow drivers, old ladies, and every single surviving member of his family. But it's in the rare moments of connection-training an abandoned bird up for combat, commiserating with a toddler in a breakfast joint, spoon-feeding his grandmother gelatinized milk-that Alby begins to see a way to survive his pain. With unforgettable style and force and an "ingenuous humanity that makes every page feel new" (The Guardian), Matt Sumell's blistering debut blurs the line between fighting for and fighting with the only family you've got.

Punching Jackie 1Little Things 13If P, Then Q 21Rape in the Animal Kingdom 23Everything Is a Big Deal 41Eat the Milk 54The Block, Twice 65American Ninja 2 75Making Nice 81Super Markets 85Their Appointed Rounds 95Rest Stop 102Testy 112Toast 126All Lateral 138I'm Your Man 164Inheritance 172The Cold Way Home 175OK 183Bugs 217Acknowledgments 221