It was the new World Trade Center then, still under construction in 1974, the talk of New York, when on that muggy morning in August, Philip Petit took to the sky. Suspended on a wire between the Towers, 110 stories above the ground, suspending all disbelief, he walked, he ran, he skipped a beat, dancing between life and death.

“Those who saw him hushed.” From its opening line, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCullen holds us in rapt attention to life in the big city and its people living on the edge. In ten interrelated stories, McCann's characters - prostitutes, priests, mothers, artists, computer hackers - collide and crash, and touch one another in unexpected ways.

A heart-stopping, drop-dead gorgeous must-read.

Luminous. That's the word that comes to mind in Dillard's prose. It shimmers off the page. Dazzles in the waves like a day at the beach. (Bring the sunblock.) A distilled and stark story of a long marriage, more of a meditation on love than of characters who actually live and breathe. The end satisfies the means, however, in the final chapters, where The Maytrees at long last have reconciled their lives together. You'll never a read a kinder, gentler death scene than Toby's passing. "Tomorrow is another day only up to a point."

A Therapist's Memoir of Madness. I picked up this book for a project I'm working on, and couldn't put it down. Astonishing. Unflinching. Six pained portraits of mental illness that read like a novel. With compassion for her patients, Slater brings to words the otherwise inaccessible states of schizophrenia, depression, catatonia, anxiety and bulimia. "We are one," she writes in her concluding sentences of the book, "As people we are always one."

By happenstance, stumbled upon this little volume online this morning -- must read! A book in verse written for young people. . . caught up in the metaphor, "Every child is like /A little world with ever changing weather/Nights and mornings/And somehow here we are/Spinning through the universe together.

In the line-up: Book Club reading for March. Short and savage.

An illusive snake in the garden dissolves a marriage. A night in a bowling alley leads to a string of unforgettable accidents. A fourteen year old with a hunting rifle never misses what she’s aiming for.

No words are wasted and every voice rings true in Bonnie Jo Campbell's collection of short told of broken bodies and broken souls. Born out of junk yards and scrap heaps, the Rust Belt debris of Michigan industry, battered on back roads, or blown in out of storms, her characters shock and surprise, shine light and ultimately find grace and redemption. Stunning and spare, American Salvage is story telling at its best: taut, nuanced, brutally honest and brave.

February's reading for book club.

Like a box of chocolates (and yes, there's a little Forest Gumplike thing going on) I gobbled up one story after another, not without pleasure. A novel "made for book clubs" - short and sweet in little bites, embracing all themes female, overweight, overwrought and aging, whereby Olive Kitteridge is either central or weirdly inserted for a cameo. Worth the ride and the read, the stories get better as they get going and a few are genuinely and completely hilarious. (Now come on, who doesn't love Olive?)

A sad, wistful character portrait of a woman oddly fulfilled and contented with so little.

Book Club selection for January: quick, gotta read.

What is it like to lose one's moorings, abandon a family? "What kind of person decides they can throw everything away and - reinvent themselves? As if you can just discard the parts of your life that you didn't want anymore. " (page. 198) This is the central and unrelenting question in Chaon's unsettling novel, Await Your Reply. Six characters in search of identity and each other, converge and merge in three separate stories, reflecting on the themes of loss, love and survival.

A quick, absorbing read. Eleven lovely stories about loss and love, mostly from the perspective of lost, divorced, angry or formerly angry women. One more selection from the Odyssey Bookshop's "First Edition Club."

A pleasure from the first line (parody of Camus? "Mother died today, or was it yesterday?") Funny, puerile at times, sweet and wise and a load of memorable characters. Seems written for easy transition to film-- now on Spielberg's List.