In "S ANGEL" a group of wedding guests is hijacked by a fast-talking real estate agent, but not before the bride herself disappears. "Smoke" takes us to a baseball catcher's funeral, where one of the mourners, a has-been pitcher, confronts the ruins of his career. In the hilarious tide story, a graduate student plagiarizes a dissertation on the movement of clouds, only to find himself and his faculty adviser in a parlor game where each player must confess the worst thing he or she has ever done. The second part of the book, "The Lost World", is a series of stories about a young boy, Nathan Shapiro, who must face the wrenching emotions caused by his parents, ' bitter divorce.