This dazzling collection of four stories features characters bound together by their parallel moments of reckoning with their pasts—and proves the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls is also a master of the short story.  “Beautiful…. Will abruptly break your heart.” —The New York Times The characters in these four expansive stories are a departure from the blue-collar denizens that populate so many of Richard Russo’s novels. In “Horseman,” a young professor confronts an undergraduate plagiarist—as well as her own regrets. In “Intervention,” a realtor facing a serious medical prognosis finds himself in his late father’s shadow. “Voice” gives us a semiretired academic who is conned by his estranged brother into joining a group tour of the Venice Biennale. And “Milton and Marcus” takes us into a lapsed novelist’s attempt to rekindle his screenwriting career—a career that depends wholly, at a crucial moment, on two Hollywood icons (one living, one dead).  Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.