•  For another view of Salter’s world, There and Then: The Travel Writing of James Salter (2006) offers a collection of two dozen essays recounting the global travels and observations of this peripatetic writer.

•  The stories of John Cheever, like those of Salter, explore the spiritual and emotional emptiness of middle-class, suburban life. The Stories of John Cheever won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1979.

•  Another frequent contributor to the New Yorker magazine, Canadian story writer Alice Munro writes in a much more elaborate style than Salter but focuses, as he does, on the ambiguities of life and on its open secrets and profound ironies. No Love Lost (2003) is an excellent sampler of Munro’s work, bringing together ten of the best stories from her previously published books, with commentary...