Steven J.

We long for heroes and have too few. Nelson Mandela, who recently celebrated his 91st birthday, is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint. He liberated a country from a system of violent prejudice and helped unite oppressor and oppressed in a way that had never been done before.

Three stories concern the same woman - in the first, she escapes from teaching at a girls' school into a wild love affair; in the second, she returns with her child to the home of her parents, whose marriage she finally begins to examine; and in the last, her vanished child turns up caught in the grip of a religious cult. In these and other stories Alice Munro's understanding of the people about whom she writes makes their lives as real as our own.

On a rainy, cold day in November, young Victor - a nomadic, scrappy teenager who's run away from home - sets out to sell as much marijuana as possible to the throng of WTO demonstrators determined to shut down the city. With the proceeds, he plans to buy a plane ticket and leave Seattle forever, but it quickly becomes clear that the history-making 50,000 antiglobalization protestors - from anarchists to environmentalists to teamsters - are testing the patience of the police, and what started out as a peaceful protest is threatening to erupt into violence.