Kaleidoscope — Ellyn Bache

From the award-winning author of more than a dozen novels, including "Safe Passage," which became a Susan Sarandon film, comes a collection of 20 of the writer's short stories originally published in such magazines as McCall's and Good Housekeeping in the 1980s and 1990s-- a celebration of women's magazine fiction during the height of its popularity, with subjects as contemporary as today. A woman takes up running as she struggles to return to normal after her divorce. A mother stays home with her children during a school break but longs to be at work -- until her presence becomes crucial in averting a near-tragedy. A family buys a dream house only to discover its all-too-helpful resident ghost. A brilliant engineer deals with a weight problem. A teenager thinks her parents are beyond the sexuality she is discovering in herself -- until her mother gets pregnant. An insecure teen feels like an "extra" in her own life until she becomes an extra in a movie. Sometimes poignant, sometimes funny, always entertaining, these stories touch the essence of women's lives, then and now.