by Simon Van Booy (Harper Perennial, $13.99)

Simon Van Booy is an enchanter. His previous collection, The Secret Lives of People in Love, sold more swiftly off our fiction table than any other book has ever done. It seemed he had placed a spell on it: hundreds upon hundreds kept selling; we needed only put them out by the boxful, and people couldn't help themselves. I was likewise seduced, and upon reading it discovered that the stories themselves were enchanted. It was unclear how the sum of words could be so utterly affecting. If I was unable to finish a story in one sitting, I would find myself emotionally suspended, inhabiting the story yet, weeping accidentally as I went about my day, not for sorrow, but because parts of my heart that had never felt the light of day were suddenly on the surface. Van Booy's new book, Love Begins in Winter, is a more sophisticated collection, the stories are more involved, they do not simply strike tonic notes that you didn't know you'd been craving. But his magic is alive. These stories are fully realized, beautiful, humane, hopeful, wondrous, loving works. If Simon Van Booy could write a world, I might give up everything to go live in it.