I've always been a sucker for fiction books about the circus. "Geek Love" by Katherine Dunn, "Roustabout" by Michelle Chalfoun and "Wonder When You'll Miss Me" by the late Amanda Davis are just a few books I've enjoyed about people who live and love like the rest of us but who just happen to hang from high wires, tame lions or in the case of "Geek Love," have flippers instead of hands.

"The Circus in Winter" (Harcourt, $23), a debut collection of short stories by Cathy Day, takes a new spin on a never-quite-familiar theme by tracing the history of the Great Porter Circus, from its inception to its demise and beyond.

"The Circus in Winter" connects chapters through characters and events. Some of the characters we follow from young circus life to post-circus life, others are newcomers to the circus town of Lima, Indiana. A clown becomes the owner of a dry cleaning store, Clown Alley Cleaners; the owner of the Great Porter Circus has a tryst with the trapeze artist who meets a tragic end in a later chapter; and the elephant trainer's granddaughter finally answers the call of the traveler's blood in her veins. Although each chapter is relatively short, Day brilliantly creates empathetic characters while maintaining a tight narrative thread that refers you to the past story while hinting at the next. Each story begins with hope, and ends in sadness or discontent. Usually, that wouldn't be a very good plug for a book, but let's face it: that lingering feeling of longing is what makes you read a book about the circus in the first place.