The Angel on the Roof
by Russell Banks
Hardcover/506pp/Harper Collins
HBS Price: $12.99

With The Angel on the Roof, Russell Banks offers readers an astonishing collection of 30 years of his short fiction. As is characteristic of all Banks's works, these stories resonate with irony and compassion, honesty and insight, extending into the vast territory of the heart and world. "[Banks's] body of work is dominated by two novels -- "Affliction" and "The Sweet Hereafter" -- that are close to perfect, and their devastating emotional precision arises in large part from their crushing, almost Faulknerian sense of place. Happily..."The Angel on the Roof" deserves to stand alongside them." -A.O. Scott, The New York Times Book Review

First Snow on Fuji
by Yasunari Kawabata
Hardcover/227pp/Counterpoint
HBS Price: $6.99

Selected by Kawabata himself and appearing in English for the first time in this faithful and nuanced translation by Michael Emmerich, these stories encompass a Shakespearean range of mood and theme. Several emerge from one character's haiku-like perception, images that then resonate effortlessly through the narrative's subtle layers in a hallmark of Kawabata's clean and innovative style. Kawabata was the mentor of Yukio Mishima and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968.

The Rose Garden: Short Stories
by Maeve Brennan
Hardcover/307pp/Counterpoint
HBS Price: $8.99

The Rose Garden gathers much of Maeve Brennan's fiction - twenty remarkable short stories, almost all of them first published in The New Yorker in the 1950s and 1960s. In some of these stories, Brennan returns us to Dublin; in others she explores her adopted New York City. "This collection of Maeve Brennan's work reconfirms what I have long known - that her eye is clear and objective, that her humor is deep and humane, and that her prose is clean and beautiful. To mention her in the company of Chekhov and Flaubert is only proper." -Edward Albee

Roman Fever and Other Stories
by Edith Wharton
Paperback/276pp/Scribner Paperback Fiction
HBS Price: $4.99

Aside from her Pulitzer Prize-winning talent as a novelist, Edith Wharton also distinguished herself as a short story writer, publishing more than 72 stories during her lifetime. The best of her short fiction is collected here in Roman Fever and Other Stories. From her picture of erotic love and illegitimacy in the title story to her exploration of the aftermath of divorce detailed in "Souls Belated" and "The Last Asset," Wharton shows her usual skill in "dissecting the elements of emotional subtleties, moral ambiguities, and the implications of social restrictions."