Thirteen

In an advance assessment of this collection of 13 short stories, novelist Joseph McElroy remarked: "As erotic in their energy as they are poignantly unpredictable, these fictions challenge us to be as brave and free as any reincarnation we might imagine. They are mirrors and windows, reflecting a lifetime of dazzling invention." Ursule Molinaro has written more than 200 stories which have appeared in scores of journals, including Evergreen Review, Denver Quarterly, New American Review, Bennington Review, Best American Short Stories and TriQuarterly.

The stories collected here represent some of her most exceptional pieces from the 1960s through the 1980s: An unhappily married woman compulsively eavesdrops on her neighbor's daily trysts; a filmmaker photographs the brutal attack of her psychotic lover; a disincarnated spirit witnesses the charity sale of her worldly possessions; a rebellious slave is given his freedom . . . and a rebellious slave of his own; a sanguine young career woman ends her Hawaiian holiday in a violent collision with the local culture. Each of these 13 tales present intensely private worlds where the bizarre is a quietly insistent force — "an unbalanced, violent world," writes Kirkus Reviews, "where the distance between people is always too wide for them to cross."