RARE & ENDANGERED SPECIES by Richard...

RARE & ENDANGERED SPECIES by Richard Bausch (Vintage: $12; 257 pp.). The characters in Bausch’s entertaining if skewed tales of daily life struggle with challenges and resolutions. Carla, the put-upon daughter in “Weather,” embodies the tone of these stories: “She tried to master herself, wanting to put the best face on, wanting not to hurt any more feelings and to find some way for everyone to get along.” In “High-Heeled Shoe,” the apparently innocent discoveryery of a shoe in a field precipitates a crisis in a seemingly stable marriage; the title novella examines from numerous angles a woman’s unexplained suicide.