These fourteen short stories, written over the past ten years but never before collected, deal with the struggles between mothers and their wayward daughters, the often preposterous bonds that tie men and women together, and the complex games masters and servants play with one another. In spare, elegant prose, Freed delivers surprise after surprise as she shakes the truth from life. Whether it's her portrayal of a mother mired in senile dementia in ""Ma,"" a young girl experiencing her first sexual encounter with an itinerant knife-sharpener in ""Under the House,"" or a young woman incapable of loving conventionally in ""An Error of Desire,"" Freed portrays the absurdity, the delusions, the dramas, and the dignity of her characters' lives. These masterful stories reinforce her reputation as one of our most fearless and sophisticated explorers of sexual and filial love.

PRAISE FOR LYNN FREED
""Freed wonderfully carries off that hardest of all literary effects-it feels effortless and therefore absolutely real.""-Elle

""I'd say it's feminist fiction in the mode of Flaubert and Daniel Defoe.""-All Things Considered, NPR