Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below," a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer," an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home. In "Brokeback Mountain," the difficult affair between two cowboys survives everything but the world's violent intolerance. <P> These are stories of desperation, hard times, and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk tales, flights of fancy, and details of ranch and rural work, they juxtapose Wyoming's traditional character and attitudes -- confrontation of tough problems, prejudice, persistence in the face of difficulty -- with the more benign values of the new west. <P> Stories in <I>Close Range</I> have appeared in <I>The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's,</I> and <I>GQ.</I> They have been selected for the <I>O. Henry Stories 1998</I> and <I>The Best American Short Stories of the Century</I> and have won the National Magazine Award for Fiction. This is work by an author writing at the peak of her craft.