Help Wanted

Adelle Waldman's hit debut novel earned her the title of "this generation's Jane Austen" (Boston Globe). In Help Wanted, Waldman brings her unparalleled wit and knack for social observation to the world of work. At a big-box store in a small town in upstate New York, the members of Team Movement clock in every day at 3:55 AM. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day's truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before customers arrive. When a golden opportunity for a promotion presents itself, the diverse members of Movement-among them a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging to her "cool kid" status from high school, a college football hopeful trying to find a new path-band together and set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion. A darkly comic workplace caper that explores the aches and uses of solidarity, Help Wanted is a deeply humane portrait of people trying, against increasingly long odds, to make a living.