Born to a Gothic social order, branded a haunter of men's dreams, Vedette is traumatized when her small town in the magical wetlands of southern Spain's Guadalquivir River is overrun by hashish-smoking anarchists promising free love and a life without sadness to those who would follow them.

Entranced by their flamenco music, their philosophy of revenge, and the concrete ability to deliver political results, the young woman joins a movement destined to annihilation and becomes its sole survivor, burdened with the task of keeping its memory and project for a better world alive through...

Stephen Siciliano's "Sidewalk Smokers" are a melange of semi-employed rakes and rakettes occupying the ranks of a maligned subculture. Driven outdoors by the most selective kind of lawmaking, they find their resistance to the increased regulation of American life symptomatic of a deeper sense of threatened homogenization.

What's different about "The Sidewalk Smokers Club"'s battle for individual sanctity is how it is carried on within the confines of a collective effort. Lethargic sensualists, craven in their drive for publicity, the group's saving grace is that they are uncommonly kind to...