A large box is thrown from a passing van into a yard. Inside the box, the yard's owner finds some worthless junk packed with a tremendous amount of shredded paper. Enraged, he hires two local teenagers to scan the shreds into his computer, he uses special software to reassemble the shreds, and he publishes the most private and embarrassing documents about the litterbugs, the Hoopers.I Hoovered the carpet, shot some hoops, watched Hoosiers, listened to John Lee Hooker, and then lunc...

Cousin Tina Disappears is a convoluted story about an isolated family living in a small, American town. When Aunt Shirley returns home from a lengthy visit to a quack doctor, one in a series of painful treatments for an imaginary tumor, she finds Tina crawling in a heap of garbage on the kitchen floor. An argument ensues and Tina is killed by her Aunt, probably by accident. Tina's cousin, a long-time guest in the home, acts as narrator: describing the murder, an infestation of flies, the h...

When I wrote A Year with the Hoopers, my only goal was to be as funny as possible. Who needs plots, richly-developed characters, or the human condition? Not me! Before doing any other work on the book, I wrote more than 2,000 gags: one-liners, jokes, aphorisms, cartoons, and anything else I could think of. About 70 of those gags wound up in the book.What was I to do with the remaining 1,930 gags? For almost all of them, the answer was painfully simple: hold my nose, erase them off ...

Decades ago, when bands like the Everly Brothers rode the airwaves and vacancy signs shone like beacons in the night, a young man gets his first taste of love, loss, and the ethereal satisfaction that comes with knowing that the world is turning and life is being lived.

This story is Episode One of a Miniseries Novel. Each story leads into the next one, but is complete by itself.Johnny wants to be a hero, but it isn't all its cracked up to be for him. He runs into a burning building to save a child in danger and finds out he was carrying a ghost. Later on he rescues a teen from a truck accident only to find out she's invisible. What's going on?To make matters worse his favorite cartoon character, a beautiful blonde, is speaking to him from...

Where am I? The question is paramount. In total darkness, at the side of a dirt road, Richard is paying for breaking up an instance of domestic abuse outside an Albuquerque saloon. Attacked by the woman he thought he was rescuing and then by two of her assailant's friends, he is knocked cold, hogtied and left in the middle of nowhere to die of the things you die from in the middle of nowhere. But someone else is out there, too, and he's praying that the driver of the truck he hears will sp...

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEARNew York Times Book Review • The New Yorker • Entertainment Weekly • Time • Washington Post • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Christian Science Monitor • Slate • St. Louise Post-Dispatch • Cleveland Plain Dealer • Seattle Times • NBCC Award FinalistMary Karr’s unforgettable sequel to her be...

A mailman, Daniel Wasserman, and one of Santa's elves, Frost, try to save Christmas after it's discovered that Santa's mail has been forwarded to the South Pole.

From the author of the wildly controversial books Liar and Paul's Case comes one of the most anticipated — and perhaps, in some quarters, feared — books of the year. This is author Lynn Crosbie at her most honest, most cutting, most hilarious, and most heartbreaking. The stories told here are at once a cache, a repository, of a seven-year period in the author's life; and, too, a gymnasium, a place where she can flex her prodigious wit and her dazzling stash of literary tricks Deft with mat...

"Dickman's book moves with careful intensity as it confidently illuminates buried, contemporary suffering."—Publishers Weekly"Elizabeth Bishop said that the three qualities she admired most in poetry were accuracy, spontaneity, and mystery. Michael Dickman's first full-length collection of poems demonstrates each brilliantly....These are lithe, seemingly effortless poems, poems whose strange affective power remains even after several readings. Again and again the language ...

In A Cup of Comfort Stories for Dog Lovers, you’ll rejoice in three stories that honor the special relationship between dogs and their people. Sometimes bittersweet, sometimes joyful, but always poignant, these stories will touch the heart of every dog lover.

Stephen Reid has grown old in prison and seen more than his share of its solitude, its vicious cycles, and its subculture relationships. He has participated in the economics of contraband, the incredible escapes, the intimacies of torture, the miscarriages of justice, and witnessed the innocent souls whose childhood destinies doomed them to prison life. He has learned that everything is bearable, that the painful separation of family, children, and friend is tolerable, and that sorrow must...