From the author of The Oranging of America comes this inspiring true story about an American family. Rocky takes over a family, at the age of 103, and shows them how to survive.“In the end, it is Apple's affecting writing about his deepest loss that carries this book.”—Kirkus Reviews

Howard Johnson and Walt Disney are determined to acquire land near Orlando, Florida from Margery Post Merriweather, heiress of the family cereal fortune.“Reading this book is like peeling an artichoke. The outer leaves are big belly laughs at tried-and-true themes such as boosterism and oversanitized motels, but as we get below the surface we come upon ever smaller and more delicate morsels of human frailty until we wonder how much more of ourselves we can take.”—Florence King, The...

“Shows just how well comedy and criticism can mix with understanding. The story parodies the form and language”--Bookforum

This is the first collection to appear in twenty years from one of America's best short story writers. His thirteen stories are marvelous—funny, heartbreaking, and wise by turns, and on occasion all three at once.Praise for The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories:"Thank you, Mr. Apple! There's an art to writing a sad story that's also fun to read... Many of Apple's stories are heartbreaking, but there's hardly a page that doesn't yield a smile at one line or anothe...

So what's a nice Jewish boy like Ira Goldstein doing managing a flashy Puerto Rican boxer named Jésus? What is his mother doing in the arms of Solomon, the scrap-metal king of Detroit? And what, for toppers, is J. Edgar Hoover doing in a chair suspended over a boxing ring in Havana, Cuba? Charge it all to zip—that elusive form of human energy that makes hearts leap, cash flow, ideologies tremble, the world go round. Ira could sure use some zip, so he tries to find it.

It was my fascination itself with the English language that made me a writer," Apple wrote in an essay for the New York Times Book Review. Its endless suggestiveness has carried me through many a plot, entertained me when nothing else could." Growing up in a Yiddish-speaking family, Apple writes a prose that is remarkably attuned to America's cultural and linguistic With the 1976 publication of The Oranging of America, and Other Stories, Apple established himself as one of America's most a...

Taking the beloved symbol of merriment out of his conventional trappings and into the world of imaginative folklore, Baum gives Santa Claus an exciting life that evokes all the charm, warmth, and fantasy that made his Oz stories American classics.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker PrizeThe New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and Indiebound BestsellerPaul Auster’s magnum opus, 4 3 2 1 presents a sweeping and surprising story of birthright and possibility, of love and of life itself.“An epic bildungsroman . . . . Original and complex . . . . A monumental assemblage of competing and complementary fictions, a novel that contain...

Strategically placed near the best seat in your home, Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader is jam-packed with great bathroom reading. It’s the gift that keeps on giving...and giving...and giving....The BRI’s 22nd all-new edition--*Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader--*is like reading several books all rolled into one: a history book, a weird news anthology, a science text, a dictionary, a how-to manual, a sports magazine, a joke ...

The beloved bathroom reader series returns with this twenty-sixth edition that's flush with weird facts on a wide array of topics.The twenty-sixth annual edition of Uncle John's wildly successful series is all-new and jam-packed with the BRI's patented mix of fun and information. Open to any page and you may find an interesting origin (like the origin of the snow globe) or a piece of obscure history (like the true story of the man who tried to repeal the law of gra...

One of Uncle John’s all-time biggest sellers, Great Big is overflowing with everything our fans have come to expect: urban legends, forgotten history, myth-conceptions, business blunders, strange lawsuits, weird politics, amazing origins, dumb crooks, celebrity gossip, brain teasers, short facts, and more! Divided by length into short, medium, and long articles, Great Big is sure to be a hit with readers of all ages. A few standouts from these 460 pages:* The firs...

In this true crime memoir, a former member of the Irish mob under Whitey Bulger details his criminal exploits in 1980s and '90s Boston.An ice-cold enforcer with a red-hot temper, John "Red" Shea was already a top lieutenant in the South Boston Irish mob at the young age of twenty-one, a protégé of the notorious Irish godfather James "Whitey" Bulger. Brutal and ruthlessly ambitious—a loan shark, money launderer, and multimillion-dollar narcotics kingpin—Shea was at t...