Len Gasparini is a master of the dark, hard-edged, densely layered story. In his latest story collection, The Snows of yesteryear, he charts the climate of the human heart with compassion, humor, nostalgia, and irony. His characters are shaped as much by fate as by the hungry ghosts of their own pasts. A desperate publisher dreams up a clever hoax to save his weekly newspaper from going under. Life and art are crucially juxtaposed when a painter sees his ideal model in a young black stripper. A cynical pensioner finds a new purpose in life when his lady friend adopts an ageing Siamese cat. Other stories are comic and nightmarish by turns.