'Terse, expertly written . resplendent . It will blow your heart out' Los Angeles Times James Salter's extraordinary first collection, Dusk and Other Stories , won the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award. Each story is a masterpiece of sustained power and observation, exploring with subtlety a deeply personal world. Salter's lucid prose and brilliant style allow him to simultaneously expose the bright surface and probe for what lies beneath - hints of disillusionment, flaws of character. In one, a divorced woman learns that she is about to lose the last thing of real value to her. In another, two New York attorneys newly flush with wealth embark on a dissolute tour of Italy. In a third, a rider, far off in the fields, is involved in an horrific accident - night is falling and she must face her destiny alone.

'Salter can suggest in a single sentence an individual's entire history . these stories glimmer with the magic of fiction; they pull us, hungrily, into the mundane drama of their characters' lives' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times 'It's the short stories which make him one of the greatest writers of the last century and the present one' Financial Times.