Short stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.

On New Year’s Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A middle-aged husband, bewildered by his failing marriage, redirects his anxiety toward a routine colonoscopy. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation. A Russian hitman suffering from a mysterious lung ailment retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In stories about disparate characters grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary, Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happiness—and how we so often seem to understand it through our encounters with the lives, and the stories, of others.