Cheating at Canasta (2007)

The reliably amazing William Trevor offers 12 psychologically astute stories of love, pity, guilt, and the dark side of ostensibly happy relationships in Cheating at Canasta. ''Bravado'' recounts the casual murder of a teenage boy, but the quiet tales of domestic misery are even more chilling. In the grim masterpiece ''Old Flame,'' a long-married woman steams open a letter to her husband from his mistress of 39 years before. In a few pages, he evokes a lifetime of hurt, rage, and shame, mingled with unbidden sympathy and understanding, an emotional cocktail so believably complex you'll want to sample it again and again. A