The Queen of Bad Influences: Stories

Twelve compressed masterworks from this great American writer of catastrophe fiction, in which lives are upended as much by broken hearts as by collapsing dams, hideously mismanaged wars, gargantuan wildfires, and apocalyptic storms

"Jim Shepard is a fantastic writer--compassionate, funny, and fearless--[whose work] does what great writing always does: inspires us to look more closely at life, and be more caring." --George Saunders

"A deft, audacious artist." --Norman Rush, National Book Award-winning author of Mating

In Richard Ford's view, Jim Shepard's "talent is so various and canny he can write about seemingly anything and make it thrilling to us," and in these stories spanning six centuries we find viscerally evoked worlds as wildly diverse as a mercenary's corner of 16th century Madrid, a young apprentice's pre-Revolutionary Boston, and Edward Hyde's London. With civil engineers and destitute veterans we encounter the devastating 1935 Labor Day hurricane in Florida, and we read the 1864 letters between Lucy in Boon, North Carolina ("Three privates are currently sleeping soundly on our porch in their muddy blankets") and her great love, William, on the march in Tennessee ("I can't write much for it seems we are looking for a fight every minute"), while the title story introduces us to the stubborn Constance, who had "no gift for flirtation" with men, preferring Minna, her best friend and "queen of bad influences," as their vexed devotion unfolds in part on the liner Lusitania.

With irony, compassion, and withering humor, these stories evoke the terrible ease with which cataclysm, human-engineered or otherwise, can sweep away all we find most precious, and expose those limitations we've refused to address. At the same time, Shepard celebrates what is best in us: the love and friendships we sustain, and the passions and grace we grant one another.

Author: Jim Shepard
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 09/15/2026
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.70w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780593804414


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 07/01/2026
Publishers Weekly 07/27/2026
Library Journal 08/01/2026 pg. 73
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2026

About the Author
JIM SHEPARD has written eight novels, including The Book of Aron, which won the Sophie Brody Medal, the PEN/New England Award, the Ribalow Prize, and the Clark Fiction Prize, as well as six story collections, including Like You'd Understand, Anyway, which won the Story Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Eight of his stories have been selected for publication in The Best American Short Stories, two for The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and three for The Pushcart Prize. He's the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with his wife, the fiction writer Karen Shepard, and a Pittie mix and a beagle.