A father’s decision to undertake a do-it-yourself-project for his daughter is made not with love, but spite; a daughter returns to the home of her childhood not so much to attend her father’s funeral, as to carry out a long-planned revenge; once a month a professor leaves campus to look in on her senile mother, only to find herself caught in a test of will and wit, and unaware that it is a contest in which the winners always lose; a waitress who nightly pines for the one she had allowed to slip away, uncharacteristically reaches out for one intense moment of intimacy with a mysterious stranger. Those are the stories of just a few of the people whose lives are played out in Moon Alley. David Appleby’s carefully crafted stories are written in what the New England Review has termed, ‘an easy, fluid style, and that, entwined with compassion, and an acute awareness of language, provides the reader of Moon Alley with a compelling look into the lives of those who live there.