You'll never know, dear, how much I love you -- The alligators -- Pigeon feathers -- Friends from Philadelphia -- A sense of shelter -- Flight -- The happiest I've been -- The persistence of desire -- The blessed man of Boston, my grandmother's thimble, and Fanning Island -- Packed dirt, churchgoing, a dying cat, a traded car -- In football season -- The lucid eye in Silver Town -- The kid's whistling -- Ace in the hole -- Tomorrow and tomorrow and so forth -- The Christian roommates -- Dentistry and doubt -- A madman -- Still life -- Home -- Who made yellow roses yellow? -- His finest hour -- A trillion feet of gas -- Dear Alexandros -- The doctor's wife -- At a bar in Charlotte Amalie -- Toward evening -- Snowing in Greenwich Village -- Sunday teasing -- Incest -- A gift from the city -- Walter Briggs -- The crow in the woods -- Should wizard hit Mommy? -- Wife-wooing -- Unstuck -- Giving blood -- Twin beds in Rome -- Marching through Boston -- Nakedness -- The family meadow -- The day of the dying rabbit -- How to love America and leave it at the same time -- The music school -- Man and daughter in the cold -- The rescue -- Plumbing -- The orphaned swimming pool -- When everyone was pregnant -- Eros rampant -- Sublimating -- Nevada -- The gun shop -- Son -- Daughter, last glimpses of -- Solitaire -- Leaves -- The stare -- Museums and women -- Avec la bébé-sitter -- Four sides of one story -- The morning -- My lover has dirty fingernails -- Harv is plowing now -- I will not let thee go, except thou bless me -- The Indian -- The hillies -- The tarbox police -- The corner -- A & P -- Lifeguard -- The deacon -- The carol sing -- The taste of metal -- Your lover just called -- Commercial -- Minutes of the last meeting -- Believers -- Eclipse -- Archangel -- The dark -- The astronomer -- The witnesses -- A constellation of events -- Ethiopia -- Transaction -- Augustine's concubine -- During the Jurassic -- Under the microscope -- The baluchitherium -- The invention of the horse collar -- Jesus on Honshu -- The slump -- The sea's green sameness -- The Bulgarian poetess -- The hermit -- I am dying, Egypt, dying -- Separating -- Gesturing -- Killing -- Problems -- The man who loved extinct mammals -- Love song, for a Moog synthesizer.

Encompassing nearly all of the author's short fiction published between 1953 and 1975, this anthology of 103 stories ranges from his first work, "Ace in the Hole," to "Love Song, for a Moog Synthesizer."

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, 2004.