Florida Book Award Gold Medal Winner for General Fiction

A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts is a collection of stories, rooted in the Midwest, for those of us who suddenly find ourselves displaced, tourists in our own lives.

Reminiscent of the work of Lorrie Moore and Jill McCorkle, this ten-story collection features the sweetly off-beat love story "Jubilation, FL," where two highly unlikeable people share dairy products, and "The Faithful," a funny yet tender story about a family torn apart by their beautiful mother Kitty, who will not give up her coyote fur or cat's-eye sunglasses for anything. We also meet landlocked mermaids and a twists Camp Fire Girl troupe who will do anything to sell the most P-Nuttles in history.

Kelby's stories have appeared on National Public Radio's "Selected Shorts," on NPR's CD Travel Tales, and in the prestigious New Stories from the South: Best of 2006.

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The New York Times Book Review

“An artful collection of stories."

The St Petersburg Times 

“Stories quietly dazzle with complex relationships drawn with swift, calligraphic strokes.”

The Minneapolis Star And Tribune

Love and home are the constant themes of this collection of amusing and poignant stories. N.M. Kelby is never trite, even as she plows this tricky landscape.

“Whimsical, surreal, touching, and often fiercely funny, this collection takes a clear-eyed look at what it means to be disconnected from our loved ones, our landscapes, and ultimately ourselves.“Kelby has long been one of my favorite writers, and her stories are the sweet, pure, hilarious, sneakily profound essence of her.  We ache and we laugh: this is the experience of reading N. M. Kelby just as it is the experience of living in the 21st century.”

–– Robert Olen Butler author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 1993.