Beautifully crafted and movingly told, the stories in "Talking in the Dark" read like small exquisite novels. From betrayal to sacrifice, obsession to abandonment, each tale speaks the truth of the underside of love, evoking images of lowered voices and shared confessions. A single mother, haunted by loneliness and self-doubt, sleeps with her daughter's teenage boyfriend, and, in a scene of frightening family tension, turns her rage not toward the husband who abandoned her, but toward her daughter. A tennis player experiencing her first love becomes the victim of a young man's dangerous obsession.In prose filled with the subterfuges of desire and need, vibrant with the promise of love's birth or rebirth, Laura Glen Louis exposes the deepest chords of intimacy and imagines worlds that are layered and complete. "Talking in the Dark" showcases her original voice, one that arrives fully mature--incisive, unsparing, and ultimately hopeful.