*The Los Angeles Times* said of Ludmila Ulitskaya's *The Funeral Party* , "In America we have friends, family, lovers, and parents--four kinds of love. Could it really be that in Russia they have more? Ludmila Ulitskaya makes it seem so." In *Sonechka: A Novella and Stories* , Ulitskaya brings us tales of these other loves in her richly lyrical prose, populated with captivating and unusual characters.

In "Queen of Spades," Anna, a successful ophthalmologic surgeon in her sixties; her daughter, Katya; and Katya's teenage daughter and young son live in constant terror of Anna's mother, a domineering, autocratic, aging former beauty queen. In "Angel," a closeted middle-aged professor marries an uneducated charwoman for love of her young son, raising the child in his image. In "The Orlov-Sokolovs," perfectly matched young lovers are pulled apart by the Soviet academic bureaucracy. And in the stunning novella "Sonechka," the heroine, a bookworm turned muse turned...