Quick Change: Stories

by Michael Kardos

A reality TV show centers around hungry tigers let loose in a New Jersey shopping mall. A vaudeville-era quick-change artist comes to town, dazzling an ambitious journalist and inspiring murder. A professional mediator confronts the fact that she is bored to tears by her now-sober husband. A business sets up shop in Mississippi masquerading as an overseas call center specializing in poor customer service. A jealous professor slowly vanishes bit by bit along with the story itself, word by word. At turns tragic, comic, absurdist, and heartbreaking, the eleven astonishing stories in Quick Change (including two Pushcart Prize winners) reveal the full, startling range of ourselves to ourselves.

180 pages, Paperback

Published March 5, 2026

About the author

Michael Kardos is a two-time Pushcart Prize winner and the author of the novels FUN CITY HEIST, BLUFF, BEFORE HE FINDS HER, and THE THREE-DAY AFFAIR, the story collections QUICK CHANGE and ONE LAST GOOD TIME, and the textbook THE ART AND CRAFT OF FICTION: A WRITER'S GUIDE.

Michael grew up on the Jersey Shore, received a degree in music from Princeton University, and played the drums professionally for a number of years before focusing on fiction writing. For 15 years he co-directed the creative writing program at Mississippi State University, where he was awarded the John Grisham Master Teacher award, the university's highest teaching honor. ​He currently lives with his family in Delaware. www.michaelkardos.com