Stolen Pleasures Selected Stories of Gina Berriault

"Short stories and some short novels are close to poetry—with the fewest words they capture the essence of a situation, of a human being. It's like trying to pin down the eternal moment." —Gina Berriault

Gina Berriault was one of the great, rare masters of short fiction. With commendable restraint and economy, she delivered stories that contain entire worlds inhabited by a range of characters thrown into all kinds of unsettling predicaments. As a short story writer she had a gift for tapping into the emotions of love, hope, and grief, and for making them palpable within her narratives. No two of her stories are alike, except for in the inevitable disquiet the reader feels in their wake, the exquisite unease that remains at the end of such acclaimed tales as "The Cove," "The Stone Boy," and many others.

Now, in this compelling posthumous collection, Berriault's astonishing short fiction once again proves that her position as one of America's best storytellers remains unchallenged.

Gina Berriault was the author of four novels, three earlier short story collections, and several screenplays. One of the most celebrated short story writers in her lifetime, she was the recipient of multiple prestigious awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rea Award for the Short Story, and a Commonwealth Gold Medal for Literature. She died in 1999.

Leonard Gardner is a novelist and screenwriter. His novel Fat City was made into a film by John Huston and is recognized as a classic American novel. He lived with Gina Berriault for many years.

Jane Vandenburgh's most recent book is Architecture of the Novel. She is also the author of two novels, Failure to Zigzag and The Physics of Sunset, and a memoir, A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century. She lives in Point Richmond, California.