Victoria Redel’s latest collection of short stories begins with a nighttime scene: A recently divorced woman sits quietly in the background of a late-evening party. Everything is peacefully hazy until her friend’s husband turns to her and confesses that both he and his wife are in love with her. At that moment, her world shifts.

Redel, a novelist and poet, has worked with scenes like this before, most notably in her debut novel, Loverboy. In that disquieting story, narrated from a mental hospital by a mother whose bond with her child curdles into obsession, love is something to long for but