"The Noonday Cemetery and Other Stories, selected by Herling himself shortly before his death in 2000, contains thirteen stories spanning the last twenty years of his life." "In "The Noonday Cemetery," an eerie graveyard on an Italian hillside overlooks the sea and hides the secrets of a murder (or suicide?). "Beata, Santa," Herling's critique of the Pope's abortion stance, raised the ire of the Catholic Church when it was first published; it describes the plight of a lovely young Polish woman, who, raped by Serbs, moves afterwards to a presbytery in Italy, and is pressured by the Church to keep her child. In "A Hot Breath in the Desert" the terrifying deterioration of the lives of a young archeologist couple, who settle down in the idyllic region of Lucania, is recounted by two old men with heart disease strolling the Naples waterfront."--BOOK JACKET.