Springtime in Siena offers an exciting pair of faux memoirs-two period takes on American ways of growing up, sharply rendered stories that rush with verve and wit to opposite endings.

Springtime in Siena follows a hungry young academic leading a semester-abroad group to Tuscany in 1974. Gary sleeps with students of both sexes while mulling the coming post-Watergate, post-Viet Nam era. Coldly modifying his own voracious appetite, he winds up with everything he's dreamed of-but still hungry. In The Man Who Owned New York Albert's a new curate in Manhattan's richest Episcopal parish in 1907 when a Kansas farmer comes to town claiming title to the property that enriches Albert's church. The farmer's proofs looking as irresistible as his daughter, Albert weights what he really wants out of life-and commits a gaudy crime to secure the farmer's patrimony.