Tooth and Claw

The fourteen stories gathered here, which have appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, Harper's, McSweeney's, and Playboy, as well as in The O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Stories volumes, display T. C. Boyle's imaginative muscle, emotional sensitivity and astonishing range. There are the whimsical tales for which Boyle is justly famous, including "Swept Away," which tells of a female ornithologist who falls in love on the blustery island of Unst, and "The Kind Assassin," about a bored and …