Little Tours of Hell: Tall Tales of Food and Holidays

With penetrating dark humor, British writer Saxton explores dinner parties and leisure hours in this short story collection. In ""The Rabbit Pie Man,'' Eve Thorndike, a ``famous cookery journalist,'' is finally satisfied with an unsavory gourmet whom she (literally) has for dinner. ``The Golden Mile'' is a gentler story that captures the mood of a young girl on her own at a summer fair. Although Saxton chooses a beautifully obvious theme in food and holidays, she falls short of the mark by failing to bring many of her tales to worthy conclusions. A good number of these stories are fragmentary; readers will be disappointed that the author does not allow them to have their cake and eat it, too. (December)