GOOGLE “coral cove” and you will get a list of resorts offering beautiful views and tranquil spaces. In Coral Cove and Other Stories (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House; 160 pages; 2017), the latest short-fiction collection of award-winning author Angelo R. Lacuesta, you will get those — from Batangas to Boracay, Davao to Macau. But in reading the 11 stories in it, readers would be wise to be vigilant.

A passage from one of those stories, “Pacific Paradise,” pretty much sums up what you can expect from the book: “She wondered if she had known somehow that something like this would happen on the day her marriage began, or when she opened her eyes that dark morning.”