The Virginity of Famous Men, award-winning story writer Christine Sneed's deeply perceptive collection on the human condition, features protagonists attempting to make peace with the choices--both personal and professional--they have so far made. This collection is a Booklist Editor's Choice winner, and the Chicago Writer's Association's Book of the Year.

"Snared by each of the collection's tragic, comic, quirky and/or quotidian lives . . . the reader tears through page after page and by the end feels not only bereft but ravenous, hungry for more . . . Fiercely meditative and unnerving short fiction." - New York Times Book Review

"These marvelously precise and lucid stories, so rich in psychological insights, so propulsive, switch from funny to wrenching in a heartbeat. Like Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Edith Pearlman, Sneed, as attuned to our buzzing-hive world as she is, writes timeless stories richly human in their empathy and wit, grace, and toughness." - starred review, Booklist

"This is an absolute gem of a collection, each perfectly formed story encompasses a world." - featured, boxed review, The Bookseller (UK)

"Sneed's strength is her characters; we often find them in the middle of a choice. It feels refreshing. These are not the aimless, wondering, interior characters we dread in short fiction. The active nature of every one of Sneed's people is that they want something, and we know what that something is. They desire to get away, dissolve into someone else, be saved, and ultimately not be on their own. We empathize with their desires, and root for--and sometimes fear for--the decisions they make." -Los Angeles Review of Books

"Readers will find themselves invested in these worlds and lives. Tenderly portrayed and sharply observed. A rich collection." - Kirkus

"[An] impressive and expansive story collection . . . From the rich and famous to the down and out, Sneed's characters are exposed by life's twists and turns, their inner struggles laid bare as they seek connection to the people they love most." - Publishers Weekly