"The beloved author at her storytelling best: four wonderful novellas of Americans abroad and Europeans in America. In these absorbing and exquisitely made novellas of relationships at home and abroad, both historical and contemporary, we meet the ferocious Simone Weil during her final days as a transplant to New York City; a vulnerable American grad student who escapes to Italy after her first, compromising love affair; the charming Irish liar of...

The friendship that began in the 1980s between Alison, a young woman struggling with her ruined career as a fashion model, and Veronica, an older eccentric proofreader, survives Alison's return to the world of fashion and Veronica's battle with AIDS.

Rookie homicide detective Anna Travis who, during her first case, tracks a serial killer who has transitioned from prostitute victims to innocent students, a murderer who may possibly be a famous actor.

In a small Greek island village, a group of travelers from around the world and the local residents they encounter are brought together when tragedy strikes.

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.

Fifth Business: "Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him" -- publisher website (May 2007). The Manticore:...

Allander Atlasia is an infamous psychopath whose heinous crimes have earned him a lifetime stay at the Tower (nicknamed Alcatraz II), the world's most extreme maximum-security prison. But after a briliant and brutal escape, the criminal mastermind begins a killing spree that is intensely personal-one by one, victims fall prey to a twisted and chilling re-enactment of his own depraved past. Jade Marlow is an ex-FBI profiler and tracker whose fearlessness...

Presents twenty-five contemporary short stories that probe the depths of human experience and relationships.