Another excellent work of shorter fiction is "The Hill Road" by Patrick O'Keefe. Born and raised on a dairy farm in Limerick, O'Keeffe presents four connected novellas that link various generations through landscape, love and loss. A farmer falls in love with the sister of a girl he once treated cruelly. A soldier back from the World War I front recalls the life of a tragic aunt. O'Keeffe, who emigrated from Ireland to the U.S. in the 1980s and received a degree in English from the University of Kentucky, writes in the spirit of William Trevor and the aforementioned John McGahern. ($23.95 / 225 pages / Viking)