BRIEFLY NOTED.

Returning to Earth, by Jim Harrison (Grove; $24). In this moving meditation on life and afterlife, a northern Michigan family confronts devastating illness and death. Donald, suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease and disinclined to lose any more control over his failing body, asks his family to assist him in suicide and to bury him in a remote spot in Canada. Although the themes and preoccupations of Native American religion--Donald is "over half Chippewa"--form the narrative's spine, Harrison's handling remains admirably unsentimental. Bears, ravens, and lilacs (symbols of mourning and resurrection) appear repeatedly, yet the vividly depicted inner lives of the characters don't rely on metaphors for meaning. Harrison gradually illuminates the often traumatic past, throwing up shadows that signify the vast spaces of his imagined world.

Love in a Fallen City, by Eileen Chang, translated from the Chinese by Karen S. Kingsbury and Eileen Chang (New York Review Books; $14.95). Eileen Chang achieved early fame in China with the publication of two volumes of stories and essays in the nineteen-forties, but she emigrated for political reasons in the early nineteen-fifties, eventually settling in California, where she lived reclusively until her death, in 1995. The six stories in this collection reveal her to be a master of the form. They trace the fragile relations between men and women in Shanghai and Hong Kong, tragic figures who fail at love while battling the suffocating expectations of their elders. In the title story, a young divorcee risks her honor as she tries to start her life again with a wealthy playboy. Chang's world is a stark and mysterious place where people strive to find their way in love but often fail under the pressures of family, tradition, and reputation.

Sea of Thunder, by Evan Thomas (Simon & Schuster; $27). The Battle of Leyte ...