Bigfoot Dreams, Francine Prose (Pantheon). Vera Perl,...

Bigfoot Dreams, Francine Prose (Pantheon). Vera Perl, a journalist for the racy tabloid This Week, “is the queen of the checkout counter, laureate of the express line.” Francine Prose satirizes the world of sleazy journalism, but also offers insights into “a tangled web of complex relationships, pathetic compromises and learning to live in a world one never made” (Elaine Kendall).

Courting Fame, Karen Stabiner (Harper & Row). The author traveled the women’s tennis circuit, “witnessed firsthand the agony and ecstasy of young girls not even old enough to spell those words, got into the hearts and souls of the parents, and watched with disgust as adult agents and promoters groveled for the attention and contract of each new Tracy Austin clone to come on the scene. . . . Stabiner shows their scars, but she also leaves room for some rooting that each may make it to the end of her tennis rainbow” (Bill Dwyre).

Necessary Losses, Judith Viorst (Simon & Schuster). “There is much of value in this book, in (the author’s) respect for the individual, in her emphatic detailing of the ways in which various people deal with the necessary losses in their lives, in her often poignant sketches of her own family relationships and, though it may leave some readers unsatisfied, in her faith that self-understanding is better than self-delusion” (Elinor Lenz).

Another Marvelous Thing, Laurie Colwin (Knopf), “a chain of stories about the rise and fall of an adulterous love affair, skitters, leaps and dodges over a variety of literary sinkholes. . . . (Laurie Colwin) handles feeling as cunningly as Ann Beattie and Frederick Barthelme handle numbness” (Richard Eder).