At forty-five, clinical psychologist Davida Grayson, leaves a thriving practice in Oakland, California to return to her childhood home in Still Water, Kansas after the death of her reclusive father. Her mother is in a nursing home, suffering from Alzheimer's disease. In the ensuing months, unsettling events threaten Davida's safety, sobriety, and sanity. Foremost among these is the reappearance of her high school sweetheart, Paul, who had traumatized Davida as a teenager by playing an inexplicably cruel practical joke. Events suggest that he may be stalking her, but she is starting to...

Helen and Cal Earlywine, in their early '70s, are the last of generations to work their rural Iowa farm. Their beloved son Tom was to have carried on the tradition, but, twenty-six years ago at age twenty, he met a sudden death. Now, when much more of life lies behind them than in front of them, Helen and Cal must face the reverberations of Tom's death and the somehow surprising, though always inevitable, sabotage of old age-Cal's deteriorating hip, Helen's sister's increasing dementia. Enter Nancy Bannister, relentless town booster and manipulator of a hapless town council. Nancy is...

These fanciful stories are based on well-known European fairy tales and fables. As with the originals, some are light and whimsical, others ferociously grim. They are written in the traditional language and style that we remember from childhood, but unlike the originals, they are not for children. Adult lovers of fairy tales may, on reflection, have wondered how fared the wedding night of a princess who could not endure a pea; what became of Hansel and Gretel after their hideous ordeal; what inner anguish the naked emperor suffered as he doggedly paraded past his gaping subjects; and whence...