Winter's Tales, New Series 6

The most powerful story in this popular annual gathering, Patrick Roscoe's ``My Lover's Touch,'' probes the masochistic needs of a teenager who as a child was kept in solitary confinement by a kidnapper and brutally beaten. There are striking modern fables, such as Haydn Middleton's ``The Conversion,'' about a traveling salesman whose wife moves into the hippie commune next door, and ``The Interrogator's Divorce,'' Paul Sayer's conjuring of an imaginary (but all too familiar) terroristic police state. Joyce Carol Oates offers keen sociological analysis in ``The Hair,'' a witty profile of two suburban couples' unbalanced friendship. Each story in this collection by an international group of English-speaking writers has a unique setting, from the ornate Parisian apartment featured in Clare Colvin's spine-tingling tale, ``Something to Reflect On,'' to California's desert landscape in the 1940s, where Laura Kalpakian's disheveled townsfolk in ``Right Hand Man'' make their home. This outstanding anthology is, as usual, a delight, showcasing a galaxy of old and new talents. (Jan.)