Alice Munro's central characters range from 14-year-old Lauren in "Trespass," through the young couple in "Runaway," whose helpful older neighbour intervenes to help the wife escape, all the way to a 70-year-old woman meeting a friend of her youth on a Vancouver street and sitting with him to recall their tangled lives fifty years earlier, through a web of cheerful lies. Three of the stories, "Chance," "Soon," and "Silence," are linked, showing us...

Life's a bit of a beach these days for Ginger Walsh, who's single at 41 and living back home in the family FROG (Finished Room Over Garage). Geri, her BlackBerry-obsessed sister, is also nearly off the deep end about her pending fiftieth birthday (and might just drag Ginger with her). Toss in a dumpster-picking father, a Kama Sutra T-shirt wearing mother, a movie crew come to town with a very cute gaffer, an on-again, off-again glassblower boyfriend,...

A collection of short fiction explores the complexities of human relationships and emotions in stories about a housekeeper entering old-maidhood whose life is transformed by a practical joke and a lifelong philanderer who finds the tables turned.