This is a tale of growing up in Canfield, Ohio during the 1950's and 60's. While the story follows me, the tale isn't about me. I wasn't special--just one more baby boomer kid. My memories, the thoughts and feelings of each day, my twists and turns through those years were ordinary--common to countless others of that generation. Rather, the tale is about the place that surrounded, that pushed and pulled at kids like me, and the tugs within us that created the experience of growing in that ...

It came from the mind of Stephen King...You've seen the films, now read the original stories - and get a unique insight into Stephen King's take on the productions.For Stephen King, the experience of seeing his works of short fiction adapted for major Hollywood films has created its own tales, and he shares them here: five of his celebrated short stories, plus King's personal commentary, his all-new introductions, and essential, behind-the-...

Newbery medalist Jerry Spinelli has penned his early autobiography with all the warmth, humor, and drama of his best-selling fiction. And don't miss the author's highly anticipated new novel, Dead Wednesday!"A master of those embarrassing, gloppy, painful, and suddenly wonderful things that happen on the razor's edge between childhood and full-fledged adolescence" --The Washington PostFrom first memories through high school, including firs...

Chosen by Paul Auster out of the four thousand stories submitted to his radio programme on National Public Radio, these 180 stories provide a wonderful portrait of America in the twentieth century. The requirement for selection was that each of the stories should be true, and each of the writers should not have been previously published. The collection that has emerged provides a richly varied and authentic voice for the American people, whose lives, loves, griefs, regrets, joys and sense ...

Canadian winters are notorious! But this collection will warm your heart, brighten your day, and lift your spirits with its 101 stories about embracing and making the most of those long winter months.Winters in Canada are tough, but so are the people! Any Canadian – from east to west coast; from city to rural – will love the 101 stories in this new collection about embracing those long winter days and making the most of them. Filled with amusing and encouraging sto...

“A darkly funny memoir about family reckonings” (O, The Oprah Magazine)—the story of a young man who, by handling the dead, makes peace with the living.Andrew Meredith’s father, a literature professor at La Salle University, was fired after unspecified allegations of sexual misconduct. It’s a transgression that resulted in such long-lasting familial despair that Andrew cannot forgive him. In the wake of the scandal, he frantically treads water, stuck in a ...

In The Chili Cone Chronicles, Michael Winslow shares his remarkable story of growing up and coming-of-age in a small midwestern town during the tempestuous, whirlwind time of the 1960s. Funny and poignant by turns, Winslow offers a memorable journey through the mayhem as he relies on the comfort of his family, oddball friends, and small-town charm to make everything right in his own little corner of the world. Against a backdrop of calamitous world and national events, Winslow rec...

"Adventures of a Substitute Teacher" gives readers a glimpse of the often amusing, frequently hilarious, and always entertaining happenings inside contemporary classrooms. These real life adventures are seen through the eyes of one who loves children, filtered through the imagination of one who relishes humor, and illustrated by the itchy fingers of one who enjoys cartooning. The stories are true, the names are false, and illustrations are exaggerations. A thoroughly delightful read!

“Garrison Keillor made it possible, after twenty years of black humor…to be both funny and nice, hip and winsome, scathing and loving, all in the flick of a single many-barbed quip——The Washington Post Book World“Keillor’s literary style is as flexible and assured as his vocal delivery. It can slip from mood to mood so subtly and quickly you’re never quite sure where you are…. [His] writing has the silvery slip of running water, so gracef...

Oras Boy is a true story of a boys struggles to survive growing up with the prejudices of a small New England mill town in the 1940s and 50s. Abandoned by his father and rejected by his mother was only the beginning of his struggles. Born in a highly conservative French Canadian Catholic community, he has to overcome inordinate bigotry to gain acceptance and approval from the very community in which his mother is ostracized and scorned for violating the tenets of her church.not once, but t...

All baby boomers are children of their time. In Our Time After a While, writer Lloyd Billingsley backpacks into that time, the tail end of the tail-fi n era, in its very birthplace. In the motor cities of Detroit and Windsor, the streets, schools and parks jostled with a vast cast of characters. The author charts their adventures, and the sound track no border could stop, and which would spread around the world. This was long ago, but like Bob Seger the author is still humming a song from ...

The lives of congenial American fly-fisherman Billy and his younger sister Alice meander alongside the Susquehanna River in this offbeat coming-of-age novel of death, madness, and fishing by debut author Karen Fielding. What starts out as a frolic of losers and drifters along the American riverscape flows into something more sinister when twelve-year-old Billy Sycamore encounters a stranger in the woods, while Alice is left to deal with the fall-out. In the spirit of Richard Brautigan's Tr...