Daniel Stern has been leaving his individual mark on the American short story for the last dozen years in four distinguished collections, starting with the acclaimed Twice Told Tales. Now in his fifth, Stern has offered a novella and seven stories dealing with his major themes: the life of the senses, the life of art--with special emphasis on the art of music--and the comic and lyric results when the two lives cross paths. From contemporary Paris to the New York of the fifties, from the way the mind works to the way the heart sinks or sings, these stories wend their magical way.