Chris Maple, a news photographer, loses her job and decides to freelance in Laguna Beach, California. While exploring the town she casually takes pictures of a wedding party, including the bridal couple and some sinister-looking guests. When the newlyweds disappear and the groom is murdered, Chris realizes that her pictures may hold clues to the crime. She enlists the aid of her ex-husband, a police lieutenant, to solve the case. Her efforts result in an attack on her own life, but she persists until the threads of the mystery unravel. Green politics is a subplot of the story, together with...

A lonely pretender desperately seeking answers in a California ghost town, a housewife contemplating suicide in an isolated Michigan cottage, a constantly quarreling couple, a scorned survivor of the Alamo--these are some of the characters in "Faces You Meet," a collection of short stories about the often surprising ways people cope, not only with each other but with an ambivalent, sometimes hostile world. Some of the selected stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies, others appear here for the first time. Their themes include love, loss, separation, reconciliation,...

Chris Maple, a news photographer, loses her job and decides to freelance in Laguna Beach, California. While exploring the town she casually takes pictures of a wedding party, including the bridal couple and some sinister-looking guests. When the newlyweds disappear and the groom is murdered, Chris realizes that her pictures may hold clues to the crime. She enlists the aid of her ex-husband, a police lieutenant, to solve the case. Her efforts result in an attack on her own life, but she persists until the threads of the mystery unravel. Green politics is a subplot of the story, together with...