Four stories about a misbehaving boy who causes mayhem during the Christmas season.

Constance, the wife of a crippled English aristocrat, runs away with her gamekeeper. Includes Archibald MacLeish's letter to Barney Rosset and Judge Bryan's decision in the obscenity case.

"A blisteringly original and wickedly funny collection of stories about the strange worlds that women inhabit and the parts that they must play. A sense of otherworldly menace is at work in the fiction of Nicole Flattery, but the threats are all too familiar. SHOW THEM A GOOD TIME tells the stories of women slotted away into restrictive roles: the celebrity's girlfriend, the widower's second wife, the lecherous professor's student, the corporate employee....

Reading, watering flowers, and engaging in other good girl behaviors, little Matilda alerts the police to the whereabouts of masked ne'er-do-well Hans, whose capture is sought when he releases animals from the zoo and whose true identity proves to be a big surprise.

"A Mouthful of Air is a compassionate and wrenching portrait of Jule Davis, a young wife and mother torn between the love she feels for her family and the voice in her head that insists they'd be better off without her. We meet Julie several weeks after her suicide attempt, on the eve of her son's first birthday. Grateful to be alive, Julie tries her best to appreciate every moment--"this tree, that passing car, that pretzel guy up ahead on the corner....

Amelia must continually remind her gorilla friend, Nilson, not to have fits, especially when they are running errands with her mother, but sometimes Amelia stomps and growls, too.

While Harry's third-grade class is studying birds, the cold winter weather keeps them cooped up inside during recess and Harry gets restless.

Frustrating his fiendish parents with his desire to be kind and helpful instead of gruesome and ghastly, Filbert is banished from monster school when he behaves well in class and meets a mischievous dropout who also longs to be accepted.

A group of children learns the importance of being fair and waiting to take one's turn .

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life -- steady boyfriend, close family -- who has never been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex-Master of the Universe Will Traynor, now wheelchair-bound after a motorcycle accident. Will has always lived a huge life -- big deals, extreme sports, world travel -- and he's pretty sure he cannot live this way. Will is acerbic, moody, bossy...