A collection of short stories featuring women from all walks of life, including "The Women's Club," "Rules and Secrets," "Across the Bridge," "Friends and Oranges," and more

Reviews

These 19 fresh, vivid short stories are set in small, declining North Carolina towns. Sharply observant, they ring true with the easy cadences of rural speech. Many of them capture a turning point in the lives of teenaged girls, who, as they cast an uneasy eye on the breakup of marriages, or observe friends with abusive lovers or neighbors with severely restricted lives, make an almost unconscious decision to break away. Rich with gentle humor, in "The Silver Crescent," a fearful and suspicious grandmother makes her first trip to New York, a journey experienced in unexpectedly zestful ways by her 13-year-old granddaughter. Men in these stories fare badly; they are adulterous, disturbed, insensitive or egocentric. A few stories deal with women, who, by virtue of their intellect and determination have escaped their harsh lives. Though limited in scope, the collection is braced by sharp characterizations and a strong evocation of a gritty, working-class milieu.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this uneven collection of 19 stories depicting women in various stages of life, from teenager to housewife to professional to Southern grandmother, Moose uses pseudo-Imagism to show how women view their situations through association. Generally, her tautness works, as in "Rules and Secrets," where a single image hints at why a popular teacher is fired, or in "The Blue Bonnet Bug," where a childhood fear of rats spawns a woman's sudden illness. But a reckless shower of these images, as in "The Women's Club," overwhelms the material. Only the last story, "Friends and Oranges," about two women whose artistic husbands leave them, realizes all the author's devices; and only the misused Impressionism of image-showers denotes the "dreaming" of the title.
- Kenneth Mintz, formerly with Bayonne P.L., N.J.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Encanto Books (pronunciation: /en-kan-toh/) represents a collection of approximately 5,000 first edition books acquired over a period of forty years. The collection is comprised primarily of hardcover fiction, but includes a sizable number of 1950?s and 1960?s pulp paperback publications as well. Spanning a timeframe from the 1930?s Depression era all the way up to the present day, the collection has something of interest for virtually any serious antiquarian. In searching the Encanto Books website, you will see that a majority of the books for sale are true first editions, first printings; tantalizing, many of these are signed editions, too. While the collection has great depth and scope overall, there is no denying that our greatest interest was reserved for finding books of a particular genre of fiction: mysteries. Encanto Books has succeeded in collecting virtually the entire output from some of the greatest American mystery writers ever. In perusing the website, you will see that in many cases you will not only have the opportunity to acquire the first book in a series about a gumshoe who straddles the legal line, but instead, rare first editions of the entire series.

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Encanto Books
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