INSIDE "TEN STORIES." A young girl at the zoo comes face-to-face with a four-hundred-pound gorilla that seems to be in on her guilty secret. When they steal a bike from a reclusive neighbor's shed, three middle school boys discover a history of tragic loss in their Adirondack town. A collegiate swimmer who's never been fooled by boys discovers that she's fooled herself over one: the young philosophy professor who swims in the university pool. When his older cousin meets a seductive woman in a 1969 Thunderbird, a boy gets a revealing look at the thrill of teenage life. A young state trooper carries a diamond ring in his pocket across an Arizona desert highway, hesitant to make his move, until circumstances speed things up. A veteran literature teacher comes to grips with the true power of final chapters on his last day in the classroom. Awash in the excitement of a lucrative first job, a fresh-faced college graduate gets a dose of reality on the streets of New York.

Set in varied landscapes, these ten short stories provide glimpses of humanity from a multitude of angles. They tell of men, women, children, and families at different stages of life's journey: beginnings, endings, and stops along the way. Each portrays ordinary people at extraordinary moments - both joyful and tragic - that shape their experience of the world.