Some writers deliver stories with a punch – bursts of flashy language, fiery plot turns, lots of fanfare. Acclaimed novelist Tom Perrotta takes a quieter approach. He delivers the goods with such deceptive ease and simplicity, you may marvel at how he does it. In his new short story collection, “Nine Inches,” Perrotta front-loads the book with two zingers that set the bar for what follows. Nor does he disappoint.

Perrotta’s leafy green, hormone-drenched landscape sets the stage for all manner of unraveling. These full-bodied short pieces, 10 in all, are not your garden variety coming-of-age stories. Instead Perrotta relies on the residual longing and regrets of thwarted adults as much as the antics of canny teens. Welcome to a world of arrested development, where age is no barrier to entry.

Perrotta, a Boston-area author who has appeared at Maine’s Stonecoast Writers Conference, is a chronicler of suburban angst. Baseball and barbecue, manicured lawns and neighborly ties are hallmarks of his enclaves. Yet beneath these facades, he exposes the raw nerves of the people who live there. Cops and teachers, doctors and Little League umpires are among the authority figures who walk a fine line in these variously queasy, taut, edgy, wry and darkly satisfying stories.

Perrotta excels at portraying characters at the edge, teetering, before they lapse into conduct that they may – or may not – come to regret. So it is that we see prominent citizens, along with ordinary stiffs, acting out in ways both large and small.

In “Grade My Teacher,” a needy high school instructor confronts a sophomore over a derisive rating that the student posted online. When the two meet to discuss the issue, the teacher softens and divulges too much of her personal life. “Vicki hesitated long enough to realize she was making a mistake, then kept going,” Perrotta writes. “A bit late, Vicki’s sense of decorum kicked in.” As in several of these stories, crossing one line only makes the next boundary easier to breach. And so Vicki cheerfully proceeds down the slippery slope.

In “One-Four-Five,” named for the harmonic structure of the blues, a distraught pediatrician finds redemption in playing blues guitar. This richly layered story of loss and transformation has some of Perrotta’s standard elements – betrayal, guarded optimism, disillusionment – all conveyed with a deft touch.

“Just a few weeks earlier, (Dr.) Sims had been an enviable man, a proverbial pillar of the community,” Perrotta says. “And now he was something else – an outcast, an adulterer, an absentee dad, the costar of a sordid workplace scandal. It didn’t seem to matter that he’d devoted his entire life to constructing the first identity; it had been erased overnight, on account of a single inexplicable transgression.”

Although his tales originate in the suburbs, Perrotta’s themes easily transcend their well-heeled locales. Even his many school settings – classrooms, dances, football games – provide a surprisingly diverse palette. These are first-rate stories for grownups of every stripe.

Joan Silverman writes op-eds, essays and book reviews for numerous publications.