Hearts

Hearts is a book of 11 short stories. They are all about strange, even bizarre manifestations of love, most of them gone wrong. Although not overly comic, most of the stories carry ironic, humorous, occasionally puzzling touches that will lighten the reader's mood. As literature they owe a lot to the short-story Russian and French masters, but are distinctly American in tone, although the settings are in both the US and Europe. Each of these vignettes could represent an episode in a TV series and as such owe a great deal to the influence of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone on the author when growing up in Philadelphia. By the way, Hearts may be the most important word in the English language since no fewer than 75 words (and probably a few more) can be derived from its six letters. Lulu Lightning's cover shows a Pinata as a broken heart from which a few of these words are spilling out.