Twenty-two stories on life in the sunset lane, illustrating the saying that every age has its charm, including old age. By the author of Brazil.

Updike's first collection of new short fiction since the year 2000, "My Father's Tears" finds the author in a valedictory mood as he mingles narratives of his native Pennsylvania with stories of New England suburbia and of foreign travel.

Twenty-two-year-old Rabbit Angstrom is a salesman in a local department store, father of a preschool-age son, and husband to an alcoholic wife who was his second-best high school sweetheart. The squalor and tragedy of their lives reminds us that salvation is a personal undertaking.

Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie return to the old Rhode Island seaside town where they indulged in wicked mischief under the influence of the diabolical Darryl Van Horne. Darryl is gone, and their lovers of the time have aged or died, but enchantment remains in the familiar streets and scenery of the village, where they enjoyed their lusty primes as free and empowered women. And, among the local citizenry, there are still those who remember them, and wish...

Attempting to cling to the ideals and world of his childhood, anaging conservative finds life increasingly difficult to understandduring the turbulent sixties.

Retells the myth of Chiron in a modern setting where Chiron is a high-school science teacher, George Caldwell, and Prometheus is his fifteen-year-old son, Peter.

Tells the story of Claudius and Gertrude, King and Queen of Denmark, before the action of Shakespeare's Hamlet begins. Employing the nomenclature and certain details of the ancient Scandinavian legends that first describe the prince who feigns madness to achieve revenge upon his father's slayer, Updike brings to life Gertrude's girlhood as the daughter of King Rorik, her arranged marriage to the man who becomes King Hamlet, and her middle-aged affair...

Traces God's relation to four generations of an American family.

Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie ply their individual witcheries in contemporary Eastwick, Rhode Island, and are themselves bewitched by a dark, wealthy, decadent stranger.