Finalists for the 1992-1993 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes : ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION

COME TO ME Stories by Amy Bloom (HarperCollins). A practicing psychotherapist’s first collection of stories, two of which were selected for the Best American Short Stories collection. Bloom captures the extraordinary beauty and off-center strangeness of ordinary lives full of need and desire, glimpsed unexpectedly, as in a young daughter’s discovery of the strange summer triangle that sustained her parents in “Love Is Not a Pie,” as well as her other stories that center on flawed human dignity.

The Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists and winners are selected in each category by an independent panel of judges. Winners will be announced in the Book Review issue of October 31.