<p> <i>The Secret Lives of People in Love</i> is the first short story collection by award-winning writer Simon Van Booy. These stories, set in Kentucky, New York, Paris, Rome, and Greece, are a perfect synthesis of intensity and atmosphere. Love, loss, human contact, and isolation are Van Booy's themes. In radiant prose he writes about the difficult choices we make in order to retain our humanity and about the redemptive power of love in a violent world. </p> <p> Included in this updated P.S. edition is the new story "The Mute Ventriloquist." </p>