<p><i>Wives & Lovers</i> is a collection of three short novels from the author whom the <i>Boston Globe</i> calls "one of the most expert and substantial of our writers."</p> <p><i>Requisite Kindness</i> -- published here for the first time -- tells the story of a man who must come to terms with a life of treating women badly when he goes to live with his sister and dying mother. <i>Rare & Endangered Species</i> demonstrates how a wife and mother's suicide reverberates in the small community where she lived, and affects the lives of people who don't even know her. Finally, <i>Spirits</i> is about the pain that men and women can -- and do -- inflict upon each other. These three very different works illuminate the unadorned core of love -- not the showy, more celebrated sort but what remains when lust, jealousy, and passion have been stripped away.</p>