The Devil You Know

''The Devil You Know'' is the follow-up volume to Farrell''s acclaimed debut collection, ''Sugar Bush & Other Stories''. The stories in ''The Devil You Know'' deal with the familiar, yet ever-engrossing, territories of sex, love, work, birth, and death. Life''s defining moments are explored through the eyes of female characters, from children to teens to adults. Family relationships, particularly between mothers and daughters, are a central theme of this collection. All families have secretsand things unspoken, but eventually these dark truths come to light, often in surprising and transformative ways. "Farrell effectively forges her image as a bad-ass version of Alice Munro. Like Munro, she''s a short story writer who focuses on the lives of girls and women in small-town Canada, but Farrell''s characters get high on mushrooms and dabble in BDSM." - The Georgia Straight There are points in Jenn Farrell''s amazing collection that I felt like I was listening in on the most intimate conversations of strangers-I was rapt with attention, but almost guilty for being privy to such intimacy. ''The Devil You Know'' treads familiar territory-small town ennui, adolescent love, grief and self-destruction-but does it with such emotional acuity that it doesn''t feel familiar at all, it feels extraordinary. - Catherine Hanrahan author of ''Lost Girls and Love Hotels''