This collection brings together in one volume all of John Hawkes’s shorter fictions, a number of which have been out of print for some years. It includes six short stories: “The Traveler,” “The Grandmother,” ’’A Little Bit of the Old Slap and Tickle," “Death of an Airman,” ’’A Song Outside," and ’The Nearest Cemetery;’’ his novella, Charivari, first published in New Directions 11 Anthology, and the two short novels, The Owl and The Goose on the Grave, written in the early 1940’s. Each brings us more of the extraordinary qualities of imagination, and the unique prose style, that have made John Hawkes one of the most admired American writers of his generation.