URBAN ORACLES

Fifteen erotic stories, rife with furtive sexual encounters, voyeurism, and daringly sensual imagery, from a highly acclaimed Spanish writer. Santos Febres's vigorously edgy, subversive tales tweak conventional pieties (e.g., in ""Mystic Rose"" and ""Stained Glass Fish"") and memorably sketch such unconventional souls as the woman who daily spies on her male neighbor showering (""Abnel, Sweet Nightmare""), and another who discovers that by adjusting her perfume she can control men's attraction to her (""Marina's Fragrance""). And Boccaccio might have liked ""Resins for Aurelia,"" in which a young gardener's fond relationship with the neighborhood whores takes a surprisingly ghastly turn. Much more than erotica, these blunt stories are crystalline glimpses of the psychology of obsession, by a writer whom we ought to know better.