Wives & Lovers" is a collection of three short novels from the author whom the "Boston Globe" calls "one of the most expert and substantial of our writers." "Requisite Kindness" -- published here for the first time -- tells the story of a man who must come to terms with a life of treating women badly when he goes to live with his sister and dying mother. "Rare & Endangered Species" demonstrates how a wife and mother's suicide reverberates in the small community where she lived, and affects the lives of people who don't even know her. Finally, "Spirits" is about the pain that men and women can -- and do -- inflict upon each other. These three very different works illuminate the unadorned core of love -- not the showy, more celebrated sort but what remains when lust, jealousy, and passion have been stripped away.