In this deeply smart and sneakily poignant collection ofessays, the bestselling author of Fraud and Don’t Get TooComfortable makes an inspired case for always assuming theworst—because then you’ll never be disappointed. Whether he’staking on pop culture phenomena with Oscar Wilde-worthy wit ordealing with personal tragedy, Rakoff’s sharp observations andhumorist’s flair for the absurd will have you positively revelingin the untapped power of negativity.

Despite nurse-midwife Patsy Harman’s own financial andpersonal medical trials, including her private battle with uterinecancer, she devotes herself to her patients’ well-being in allaspects of their lives. They, in turn, tell her intimate storiesboth heartbreaking and uplifting.

Publisher's Note It is Christmas Eve. Sitting on the steps of the village church infront of an enormous bonfire lit in celebration of the season, afather and his son exchange stories. The father speaks of life asan emigrant from Italy, in perpetual limbo between departure andreturn, between France and his home. The son tells of a life marredby his father's long absences but also of an otherwise idyllicchildhood spent in a vivid, enchanting land. Each hides an awfulsecret concerning the fate of a mysterious man whose affair withthe boy's older sister changed their lives. On this night ofnights, as the long-buried details seep through each man's story, ashared truth will finally emerge.Set in an Arb?resh? town insouthern Italy and told in alternating first-person voices, TheHomecoming is simultaneously a coming-of-age novel, a love story,and a heartfelt cry against the atrocious standards of living thatforce so many southern Italians to seek a better life elsewhere.Here is an intense and moving novel about the

Advance praise for A Strong West Wind “I loved A Strong West Wind. [Caldwell] writes of her adventuresin the sixties and seventies, and the quest for truth inCalifornia, with the authentic voice of the children who once madelife hell for the ‘Greatest Generation’ and in the process turnedout pretty great themselves.” –Russell Baker “Gail Caldwell’s quiet, burnished memoir is a story of a life’saffections—for her Texas parents, for the sere landscape of thepanhandle, and for the road paved with book upon precious book thatruns in both directions: far away and home again.” —Richard Ford “Gail Caldwell's book measures the sweep of one life againstliterature, history, legends of Texas, and the infallible truth ofreal feeling. This is a brave and moving work.” —James Carroll “An elegant memoir. Gail Caldwell performs something likealchemy—taking the base metals of the Texas Panhandle badlands andturning the

A passionate, epic writer, the author of Before Night Falls,concludes his five-novel sequence--a "secret history of Cuba" and awriter's autobiography--with this allegorical satire. Arenas paintsa harrowing yet boldly entertaining Kafka-esque picture of adehumanized people and the despair of an observer/narrator clingingto sanity.

"America's favorite writer" ( The New Yorker )unveils a world where nothing is as it seems. The daughter of a world-renowned magician, RoxyNouvelle has inherited her father's talents-and his penchant forjewel thievery. Into this colorful world comes Luke Callahan, anescape artist who captures her heart-and keeps secrets that couldshatter all her illusions...

When the phone rings in the middle of the night, childpsychologist Alex Delaware does not hesitate. Driving through thedream-lit San Fernando Valley, Alex rushes to Jamey Cadmus, thepatient he had failed five years before--and who now calls with abizarre cry for help. But by the time Alex reaches Canyon OaksPsychiatric Hospital, Jamey is gone, surfacing a day later in thehands of the police, who believe Jamey is the infamous LavenderSlasher, a psychotic serial killer. Wooed by a high-poweredattorney to build a defense, Alex will get a chance to do what hecouldn't five years ago. And when he peers into a family's troubledhistory and Jamey's brilliant, tormented mind, the psychologistputs himself at the heart of a high-profile case. Because Alexknows that in a realm of money, loss, and madness, somethingterrible pushed Jamie over the edge--or else someone is gettingaway with murder.

Once again, the depths of the criminal mind and the darkestside of a glittering city fuel #1 "New York Times" bestsellingauthor Jonathan Kellerman's brilliant storytelling. And no oneconducts a more harrowing and suspenseful manhunt than the modernSherlock Holmes of the psyche, Dr. Alex Delaware. A tipsy youngwoman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inkyblack night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broaddaylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in asmall-town beauty parlor. These and other bizarre acts of crueltyand psychopathology are linked only by the killer's use of luxuryvehicles and a baffling lack of motive. The ultimate whodunits,these crimes demand the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgisand his collaborator on the crime beat, psychologist Alex Delaware.What begins with a solitary bloodstain in a stolen sedan quicklyspirals outward in odd and unexpected directions, leading Delawareand Sturgis from the well-heeled center of L.A. society to itsdesp

This true account of coming of age in an English boardingschool, by an acclaimed young writer, is reminiscent of such booksas A Separate Peace and The Catcher in the Rye. "Strong andevocative. . . smoothly written. . . romantic."--The New York TimesBook Review.

Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, The AmazingAdventures of Kavalier and Clay, sprang from an early passion forthe derring-do and larger-than-life heroes of classic comic books.Now, once more mining the rich past, Chabon summons the rollickingspirit of legendary adventures-from The Arabian Nights to AlexandreDumas to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories-in awonderful new novel brimming with breathless action, raucous humor,cliff-hanging suspense, and a cast of colorful characters worthy ofScheherazade's most tantalizing tales. They're an odd pair, to besure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerantphysician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, agray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticismas he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin,comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the CaucasusMountains, circa A.D. 950, living as they please and survivinghowever they can-as blades and thieves for hire and as pra

Coming down from his carefree youth and unwanted fame, JackKerouac undertakes a mature confrontation of some of his mosttroubling emotional issues: a burgeoning problem with alcoholism,addiction, fear, and insecurity. He dutifully records hisever-changing states of consciousness, which culminate in apowerful religious experience. Big Sur was written some time afterJack Kerouac's best-known works, following a visit to northernCalifornia and the first feelings of midlife crisis. Kerouac stayedfor several weeks in a cabin in Big Sur, California, and withfriends in San Francisco. Upon returning home, he wrote thisaccount in a two-week period. Critic Richard Meltzer referred toBig Sur as Kerouac's 'masterpiece, and one of the great, greatworks of the English language.' --This text refers to the AudioCassette edition.

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Readers who fell in love with Precious Ramotswe, proprietor ofThe No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, now have new cause forcelebration in the protagonist of these three light-footed comicnovels by Alexander McCall Smith. Welcome to the insane andrarified world of Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of theInstitute of Romance Philology. Von Igelfeld is engaged in anever-ending quest to win the respect he feels certain he is due–aquest which has the tendency to go hilariously astray. In Portuguese Irregular Verbs, Professor Dr von Igelfeld learnsto play tennis, and forces a college chum to enter into a duel thatresults in a nipped nose. He also takes a field trip to Irelandwhere he becomes acquainted with the rich world of archaicIrishisms, and he develops an aching infatuation with a Dentistfatale. Along the way, he takes two ill-fated Italian sojourns, thefirst merely uncomfortable, the second definitely dangerous.

In this 21st novel by one of the premier chroniclers of Americanlife, a man recalls a lifetime spent in New England communities ofwomen. Owen Mackenzie, now in his 70s and living in the smallvillage of Haskell's Crossing, Conn., with his second wife, Julia,spends his days immersed in the daily routines of retirement whilereminiscing about his childhood town of Willow, Pa., and thevillage where he spent his adulthood, Middle Falls, Conn. ThoughOwen studied at MIT and founded an early computer startup that madehim moderately rich, his story is primarily defined by his romanticrelationships. He marries his first wife, Phyllis, a classmate atMIT, for her cool beauty, but later decides that he needs a broaderrange of sexual experience. After a fraught first affair, he learnscaution and is able to clandestinely indulge his love of women,until Julia, a minister's wife, comes along and convinces him toembark on a messy divorce and remarriage that indirectly results inPhyllis's accidental death. Owen's obsession with

Internationally bestselling husband and wife Jonathan and FayeKellerman team up for a powerful one-two punch with "CapitalCrimes," a gripping pair of original crime thrillers. MY SISTER'SKEEPER: BERKELEYSome of progressive state representative DavidaGrayson's views have made her unpopular. Although her foes arenumerous no one suspects that any buttons Davida might push couldevoke deadly force.But now Davida lies brutally murdered in heroffice, and Berkeley homicide detectives Will Barnes and AmandaIsis must unravel Davida's complex, before the killer pulls off arepeat performance. MUSIC CITY BREAKDOWN: NASHVILLEBaker Southerbywas a child prodigy performer. But something leads him to become aNashville cop. His partner, Lamar Van Gundy, is a would-be studiobassist who earned himself a detective's badge. As part ofNashville PD's elite Murder Squad, they catch a homicide that'shigh-profile even for a city where musical celebrity isroutine."Capital Crimes" is page-turning, psychologically resonantsuspense-j

From the foremost contemporary chronicler of London's history,a suspenseful novel that ingeniously draws on Chaucer's TheCanterbury Tales" "to recreate the city's 14th century religiousand political intrigues. London, 1399. Sister Clarice, a nun bornbelow Clerkenwell convent, is predicting the death of King RichardII and the demise of the Church. Her visions can be dismissed asmadness, until she accurately foretells a series of terroristexplosions. What is the role of the apocalyptic Predestined Men?And the clandestine Dominus? And what powers, ultimately, willprevail? In Peter Ackroyd's deft and suprising narrative, TheMiller, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath and other characters fromCanterbury Tales pursue these mysteries through a pungently vividmedieval London.

First in a brand new series from the "New York Times"bestselling creator of the Myth and Phule novels. A low-stakes conartist and killer poker player, Griffen "Grifter" McCandlesgraduated college fully expecting his wealthy family to have a jobwaiting for him. Instead, his mysterious uncle reveals a strangefamily secret: Griffen and his sister, Valerie, are actuallydragons. Unwilling to let Uncle Mal take him under his wing, so tospeak, Griffen heads to New Orleans with Valerie to make a livingthe only way he knows how. And even the criminal underworld of theFrench Quarter will heat up when Griffen lands in town.