Rage & Other Cages (Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize)

Joyce Carol Oates calls LaBrie's writing "Mordantly funny, eerily discomforting, & unexpectedly wise -- an audacious gathering of stories mirroring our contemporary world."

In her award-winning collection of short stories, Rage and Other Cages, LaBrie offers lessons on grief, loneliness, and relationships that examine what it means to be female in today's America.

The characters range from a former child actress turned real estate agent who yearns for her past, to a nurse who must convince a murderer to donate his girlfriend's organs, to a bartender at Ray's Happy Birthday Bar who is kidnapped by a customer searching for a mysterious key. Bad dates, bad jobs, and bad situations force these characters to use their wits and wiles to survive. In a voice akin to Lorrie Moore meets Mary Gaitskill, LaBrie has her readers laughing on one page and raging on another. Her voice is memorable, raw, and undeniably skillful.