What Was Mine
by Ann Beattie | 
Here We Are in Paradise
by Tony Earley | 
At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom
by Amy Hempel | 
Five Stories
by Willa Cather | 
Final Vinyl Days
by Jill McCorkle | 
A Multitude of Sins
by Richard Ford | 
Ellis Island and Other Stories
by Mark Helprin | 
In the Land of Dreamy Dreams
by Ellen Gilchrist | 
Emperor of the Air
by Ethan Canin | 
If the River Was Whiskey
by T. Coraghessan Boyle | 
Cruising Paradise
by Sam Shepard | 
Anecdotes of Destiny
by Karen Blixen | 
A Quiver Full of Arrows
by Jeffrey Archer |
Where You'll Find Me
by Ann Beattie |
Waltzing the Cat
by Pam Houston | 
The Toughest Indian in the World
by Sherman Alexie | 
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
by Stephen King | 
Birds of America
by Lorrie Moore |
Exercises in Style
by Raymond Queneau | 
Goodbye, Columbus
by Philip Roth |
Aliens of Affection" marks new territory for Padgett Powell, picking up where his first collection of stories, "Typical," left off. Although his characters continue to revolt against the received instructions of modern American living - refusing to be dunked in what Saul Bellow has called the "marinade of correctness" - their concerns are less for independence than for the maintenance of sanity itself. Emotional estrangement seems both inevitable and worth fighting against to the middle-aged heroine of the O. Henry prizewinner "Trick or Treat"; to the unmistakably American roofer of "Wayne" (who was introduced in "Typical" ); to the deserted husband, father, and non-vet of "Dump"; and to the fantastic heroes in three stories grouped as "All Along the Watchtower.