"Watch Your Mouth," his second novel, was completed before publication of "The Basic Eight". It follows a more operatic theme, complete with stage directions and various acts. "Watch Your Mouth"s second half replaces the opera troupe with the form of a 12-step recovery program, linguistically undergone by the protagonist. In April 2005, Handler published "Adverbs", a collection of short stories that he says are "about love." It was followed in January 2011 by "Why We Broke Up", which received a 2012 Michael L. Printz honor award. Handler's novel, "We Are Pirates" is about a modern-age pirate who "wants to be an old-fashioned kind of pirate." It was released on February 3, 2015. His most recent novel, "All the Dirty Parts", was published in May 2017 and "takes the blunt and constant presence of a male teen's sexuality and considers it with utmost seriousness".