Seventeen stories by seventeen brilliant writers, inspired by seventeen paintings. That was the formula for Lawrence Block's two ground-breaking anthologies, In Sunlight or in Shadow and Alive in Shape and Color, and it's on glorious display here once again in From Sea to Stormy Sea.

This time the paintings are exclusively the work of American artists, and the roster includes Harvey Dunn, John Steuart Curry, Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton, Helen Frankenthaler, Winslow Homer, Rockwell Kent, Grant Wood, Childe Hassam and Andy Warhol. Among the star-studded lineup of writers you'll find Jerome Charyn, Jane Hamilton, Christa Faust, John Sandford, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosley, Charles Ardai, Barry Malzberg, and Janice Eidus.

It's an outstanding collection, with widely divergent stories united by theme and culture, and — no surprise — beautifully illustrated with full-color reproductions of the seventeen paintings.