The murky space between childhood and adulthood was tough enough the first time around. You knew some stuff, but you were too damn proud (or, more likely, scared) to admit you didn’t know a lot of things. Kids aren’t prepared to handle big issues like death and sex. But don’t tell that to life, which throws whatever it wants right at you.

Up-and-comer Julie Orringer mines these emotional battlefields in her debut fiction collection, How to Breathe Underwater. Her stories range in style and setting — a sister and brother brave the cruelty of unknown children at a strange Thanksgiving dinner, an overweight painter and her model cousin taunt each other in the Tuscan countryside, an irresponsible aunt takes drugs while caring for her six-year-old niece — but they all have one thing in common: They pull the reader in immediately.

Get in on the action early, so in twenty years you can brag that you’ve been reading Orringer since the beginning.

Can’t bear the thought of reliving all that trauma again?

Don’t be such a baby. You never have to be sixteen again, silly.

Available online at amazon.com or at your local bookstore.