A PARALLEL LIFE AND OTHER STORIES ...

A PARALLEL LIFE AND OTHER STORIES by Robin Beeman (Chronicle Books: $8.95). The stories in this first collection are more notable for their style than their content: Beeman can turn an interesting phrase, but her characters and situations seem too improbable for the reader to care much about them. In “Three Rivers,” a fading Southern belle spends her life driving blithely around the Louisiana countryside, ignoring her well-to-do husband; an aged widow plots to steal her husband’s bones from the family crypt in the strange but atmospheric “The Realm of the Ordinary.” The most successful story in the collection is the title novella, in which a serenely promiscuous librarian discovers that extenuating emotional circumstances keep her from casually abandoning her latest paramour.