THE LION TAMER'S DAUGHTER

Here is beauty with a shiver in it: four elegant, eerie stories from Dickinson (Chuck and Danielle, 1996, etc.). In ``The Spring,'' a turnabout and darkling version of It's a Wonderful Life, a boy discovers what life would be like if he had a twin, and gets a glimpse of the world had he never been born. In ``Touch and Go,'' a garrulous but engaging codger tells a tale of slipping through time and space. In ``Checkers,'' a chilling tale of kidnapping taken from today's headlines turns into an oddly reassuring ghost story. The longest tale, which gives the book its title, mixes circus tales and the doppelgÑnger archetype in ways not entirely satisfying; with its appealing characters, it will still find fans among those who see its supernatural elements as contrived. Regardless, Dickinson is a stylist par excellence: His limpid prose carries these stories through strange territory. (Fiction. 12+)