Other new short story collections to look for:

        Bargains in the Real World: Thirteen Stories by Elizabeth Cox (Random House; $15.96; 272 pages). Thirteen stories of love, misunderstandings, good and bad luck, set mainly in the rural South.

        A Chapter From Her Upbringing by Ivy Goodman (Carnegie Mellon University Press; $15.95; 223 pages). Stories, mostly about women, that speak about how people learn to survive humiliation, cruelty and other people generally, and their own small lives, their own perceived insignificance.

        The Complete Henry Bech by John Updike (Everyman's Library/Knopf; $23; 509 pages). Hitting bookstores last week was the first book to include all of Mr. Updike's Bech stories, most of which were first published in The New Yorker. This is a crash course in the character (a witty, libidinous Jewish-American writer) widely described as Mr. Updike's alter ego.

        Faithless: Tales of Transgression by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco/HarperCollins; $27; 386 pages). Two dozen gritty, mesmerizing stories set in an eerily brutal and unsentimental world. Ms. Oates demonstrates a peculiar affinity for enervating jitteriness.

        The Hill Bachelors by William Trevor (Viking; $22.95; 224 pages). A dozen stories from the Irish-born writer that offer insight into the hearts of priests, professors, terrorists, housewives, laborers and farmers. Set in Ireland or England, the stories are fraught with dark emotion but leavened with gentle humor.

        Piranha to Scurfy by Ruth Rendell (Crown; $23; 218 pages). Brief psychological portraits, some very simple but all well-written and full of references to short-story classics. Ms. Rendell applies a sly, subtle humor throughout. Her endings often hinge on poignant or twisted coincidences reminiscent of O. Henry and Shirley Jackson.

        Woodcuts of Women by Dagoberto Gilb (Grove Press; $24; 167 pages). This handsome volume features wonderful woodcut prints by Mexican artist Artemio Rodriguez. They are very sexual, as are the stories. The protagonists here are Hispanic men, mostly young, struggling with their roles in the world of women.
       @TagName1:— Compiled by Sara Pearce

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