The House on Belle Isle (Shannon Ravenel Books)

Carrie Brown's three novels-Rose's Garden, Lamb in Love, and The Hatbox Baby-have established her as a writer who works from curiosity, skillful research, and a vivid imagination. Her reviewers have praised her "rich characterizations" (The Dallas Morning News) and her "profound, gentle insights."(The Orlando Sentinel) This first book of stories confirms those attributes seven times over. The generosity of Brown's storytelling style has never been more in evidence. Each of these seven stories presents a different authentic world-a divorcTe's spacious rent-controlled NYC apartment, a widow's Maryland neighborhood, horseback-riding camp for girls in England, a residential seaside resort in Rhode Island, a remote mountain village in Spain, a tidewater Virginia inn that flourished in the post-Civil War era, and, in the wonderful title story, a most unusual mortuary in Maine.