A Vacation on the Island of Ex-Boyfriends — Stacy Bierlein

Quirks of fate highlight this debut short story collection whose characters are women of dazzling ironies and introspections, always in motion and trusting in love -- even when it remains out of reach. Two friends plan a visit to Nantucket, but find themselves on a different island completely, where the men they have loved are lined up on the beach in chronological order; a grieving mother and daughter encounter naked strangers in unexpected places en route to the Dordogne River; a restless New York artist travels to Madrid to find a European lover, only to fall for another persnickety New Yorker. From the mysterious island in the Atlantic to the crowded highways of Los Angeles and  from the Charles Bridge in Prague to the temples of Luxor and the most remote regions of the Myanmar peninsula, the worlds invented here are inspiring and unique, original in the manner through which the physical landscape never fails to inform the emotional one.