Stalking your pet's former owners. Faking your death to get out of paying back your student loans. Stealing your co-worker's cat to teach her a lesson about hygiene. These are secrets and these are lies. Sometimes they're both. They're also just a few of the stories in Secrets and Lies, author Josh Gross's debut collection examining things people prefer to hush up and gloss over.

In this book, you'll get inside the head of a cynical competitive debater forced to logically justify the existence of love, see an alternate history in which Congress banned heartbreak after the tragic events of...