The Tenants of Moonbloom
by Edward Lewis Wallant | 
The Lost Scrapbook
by Evan Dara | 
The American Woman in the Chinese Hat
by Carole Maso | 
Pitch Dark
by Renata Adler | 
Speedboat
by Renata Adler | 
Omensetter's Luck
by William H. Gass | 
Gerald's Party
by Robert Coover | 
Hard Rain Falling
by Don Carpenter | 
Paradise
by Donald Barthelme |
A Way of Life, Like Any Other
by Darcy O'Brien | 
Memories of the Ford Administration
by John Updike |
Plexus
by Henry Miller | 
Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things
by Gilbert Sorrentino | 
As Max Saw It
by Louis Begley | 
Wait Until Spring, Bandini
by John Fante | 
Against The Grain
by Joris-Karl Huysmans | 
A Sport and a Pastime
by James Salter | 
Quartet
by Jean Rhys | 
The Temptation of St. Anthony
by Gustave Flaubert | 
Gargantua and Pantagruel
by Francois Rabelais |
This powerful short novel describes the events of a single afternoon. Alwyn Towers, an American expatriate and sometime novelist, is staying with a friend outside of Paris, when a well-heeled, itinerant Irish couple drops in-with Lucy, their trained hawk, a restless, sullen, disturbingly totemic presence. Lunch is prepared, drink flows. A masquerade, at once harrowing and farcical, begins. A work of classical elegance and concision, The Pilgrim Hawk stands with Faulkner's The Bear as one of the finest American short novels: a beautifully crafted story that is also a poignant evocation of the implacable power of love.