Fiction. These astonishing stories, which range in setting from Palm Beach to Paris to poet Robert Lowell's New York City hotel room, trace the designs and delusions of people at turning points and souls in turmoil. Robert Boyers is Tisch Professor of Arts and Letters at Skidmore College and editor of Salmagundi. He is the author of seven books, including Atrocity and Amnesia: The Political Novel Since 1945. He also won the Cooper Prize for the best short story of the year, 2003. Recent stories have appeared in The Yale Review, Harvard Review, Parnassus, and Michigan Quarterly Review.