Gay's writing encompasses so much—simultaneously direct, funny, whipsmart, sometimes painful, and always thought-provoking. Difficult Women is wonderful.

Roxane Gay is the author of An Untamed State, Bad Feminist, and the story collection Ayiti. Her work has also appeared in Glamour, Best American Short Stories, and the New York Times Book Review. She is the co-editor of PANK.

The women in these stories live lives of privilege and poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband...