Where Three Roads Meet (Mariner)

This playful and jazzy triad about fateful threesomes provides an engagingly postmodern commentary on the art of storytelling, classic mythology, and literature. The first novella explores a callow undergraduate’s initiation into the mysteries of sex, death, and the Heroic Cycle. The wandering hero of the next tale finds an all-too-familiar road made new by some provocative traveling companions. And the three sisters of the third piece recall their youthful days of muselike services to (and scandalous servicing of) a mysteriously vanished famous novelist. These three sexy novellas prove once again that Barth is "one of the best we have when it comes to getting to the heart of the story" (Rocky Mountain News).