Twelve remarkable stories by the master storyteller William Trevor
"There is no better short story writer in the English-speaking world." Wall Street Journal
In this collection of twelve dazzling, acutely rendered tales, William Trevor plumbs the depths of the human heart. Here we encounter a blind piano tuner whose wonderful memories of his first wife are cruelly distorted by his second; a woman in a difficult marriage who must choose between her indignant husband and her closest friend; two children, survivors of divorce, who mimic their parents' melodramas; and a...

Three people are frozen in a conspiracy of silence that prevents love's consummation; a nine-year-old dreams that a movie part heals her fragmented family life; a brother and sister forge a new life amid terrible beauty of Ireland after Rebellion; and in title story, a man chooses between his longtime love and a life of solitude on family farm.

A title in which, a waiter divulges a shocking life of crime to his ex-wife; a woman repeats the story of her parents' unstable marriage after a horrible tragedy; a schoolgirl regrets gossiping about the cuckolded man who tutors her; and, a middle-aged accountant offers his reasons for ending a love affair.

Suitable for those who enjoyed "The Story of Lucy Gault" and "Love and Summer", this title deals with themes of missed opportunities, the inevitability of change and the powerful but fragmentary quality of our memories.

It is summer and a stranger has come to quiet Rathmoye. He is noticed by Ellie, the young convent girl, who is married to Dillahan, a farmer still mourning his first wife. Over the long and warm days, Ellie and the stranger form an illicit attachment. Those in the town can only watch as passion, love and fate take their course.

In the early morning of June the twenty-first, nineteen twenty-one, three arsonists -- shadows in the night -- arrive at Lahardane, the home of Captain Everard Gault, his wife, Heloise, and daughter, Lucy. The sheepdogs that alarmed the Gaults of previous trespasses had since been poisoned. On this occasion, though, it is a warning shot fired above the silhouetted heads that sends them retreating, saving the estate from being set ablaze. But blood speckles the pebbles of the approach in the dawn's light, implying that the Captain's single shot wounded one of the intruders.
Everard quickly...

In Reading Turgenev, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, an Irish country girl is trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man, but finds release through secret meetings with a man who shares her passion for Russian novels.
My House in Umbra tells of Emily Delahunty, a writer of romantic novels, who helps survivors of a bomb attack on a train to convalesce, inventing colorful pasts for her patients.
Two novels, two women who retreat further into the realm of the imagination until the boundaries between what is real and what is not become blurred.

Ireland has been called a nation of story-tellers. "Stories of one kind or another have a way of pressing themselves into Irish conversation, both as entertainment and as a form of communication," writes William Trevor. "For centuries they have been offered to strangers, almost as hospitality is: tall stories, simple stories, stories of extraordinary deeds, of mysteries and wonders, of gentleness, love, cruelty, and violence." Himself an accomplished short story writer, Trevor has gathered here a collection of stories that represent not only the best of Irish short story writing, but the best...

A group of septuagenarians revive schoolboy conflicts in the election of the President of the Old Boys Association. Jaraby expects to get the job, but he reckons without the bitterness of Nox, who still remembers the humiliations of his school years. And when Jaraby's son gets into trouble with the law, Nox has the perfect stick with which to beat him. Their powers may be failing but the old boys possess a fierce understanding of the things in life that matter - power, revenge, hatred, love, and the failure of love.

William Bird has always taken in boarders who are on the fringes of society: the petty conman, the immigrant who's never been able to fit in, the blustering officer who really doesn't know what's what, and the just plain lonely. He's built a unique place with a unique atmosphere. But then he realises he's dying, and he decides to leave the place to the two tenants likely to cause the greatest amount of trouble, and the whole enterprise goes up in smoke.