"Revenge" is a tour de force about erotic love and betrayal, told through the voice of a woman showing her home to a stranger with a disturbing secret. As the once-happy wife moves from front parlor to bedroom, she insinuates herself into her guest's (and the reader's) mind -- until at last we are confronted with a shocking crime of the heart.

"An Adventure of Don Juan" and the title novella transform classic fables into immediate, wholly original tales of romance. The first puts the famous lover on a country estate in England, where he attempts to perpetrate a brilliant seduction only to discover something surprising about the human heart. "The King in the Tree" is a mesmerizing retelling of the tragedy of Tristan and Ysolt, a tale of devotion and denial, of a king's infatuation with his beautiful wife -- and the agony of her betrayal with his own nephew.

Full of passion, trysting, and fatal pleasures, these three brilliant novellas are rich with the many gifts of our most persistently imaginative romancer.