Someone to Watch Over Me: Stories – Intimate and Poignant Short Fiction on Love, Loss, and the Complexities of Human Connection

"The
essential mystery at the heart of every relationship is the subject of these
twelve stories. What drives people together? What drives them apart? Revenge,
boredom, sex—they're all here. . . . The landscape of the heart depicted here
is less bleak than it sounds; what drives these stories is the belief that love
is reachable just around the bend." —Entertainment Weekly

Richard Bausch is a master of the intimate moment, of the ways we seek to make lasting connections to one another and to the world. Few writers evoke the complexities of love as subtly, and few capture the poignancy of the sudden insight or the rhythms of ordinary conversation with such delicacy and humor. To read these twelve stories—of love and loss, of families and strangers, of small moments and enormous epiphanies—is to be reminded again of the power of short fiction to thrill and move us, to make us laugh, or cry. In these profound glimpses into the private fears, joys, and sorrows of people we know, we find revealed a whole range of human experience, told with extraordinary force, clarity, and compassion.

Richard Bausch is the author of nine other novels and seven volumes of short stories. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Playboy, GQ, Harper's Magazine, and other publications, and has been featured in numerous best-of collections, including the O. Henry Awards' Best American Short Stories and New Stories from the South. In 2004 he won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.