"Before he dazzled American readers with his best-selling novel Stanley Park, Timothy Taylor was already acclaimed in Canada as one of the finest writers of stories working today. Silent Cruise brings us this new voice in short fiction - a voice by turns compassionate and cutting, plainspoken and subtle, but always pitch-perfect.". "Here are nine variations on Taylor's abiding themes of art, work, desire and loss. In the title story, a mathematical prodigy, his mind an engine for crunching probabilities, applies his genius to the logic of the racing form and discovers the workings of chance. In "Pope's Own," a Vancouver cheese importer risks her all on a pearl of great price - a dairy farm in County Cork whose exquisite cheese has been tasted only rarely beyond the walls of the Vatican. And in "Doves of Townsend" - a story chosen by Canadian critics as the best of the year 2000 - a young antiques dealer grieving her father's suicide finds solace in a most unlikely place: a field guide to butterflies."--BOOK JACKET.