Some Heroes, Some Heroines, Some Others.

The author's first collection. As the title promises, these stories range from a small town sheriff who rids his town of a drunken murderer in his own way (after discussing the matter with a local mountain), to woman who on the gad dyes her hair with a teen-ager's piurple streak to wait on staid lawyers and judges in an up-and-coming restaurant, to a priest who-yes-slips right into current headlines of sexual child abuse in a moment of terrifying lonelines and confusion. But just as the title shifts from magnificent to commonplace, so do the characters. And Taylor reminds that we all-despite our flashes into one glorious or ignoble end of life's spectrum-that we all muddle along in life's ragged gray.