Religion brings some people peace and contentment. For Tom Larsen, his Catholic faith is the wellhead of his torment and misery. He learns early that his sexual feelings are seriously and hopelessly disordered. To act on them is a grievous sin that will gain him the same eternal damnation as murder. Seeing no other choice, he becomes a religious brother to escape his lust and to find God. Instead he finds himself and loses sight of God altogether. Inspired by a true story, Holy Hell paints...

From scary to heartwarming and hilarious, an assortment of behind-the-scenes, true stories about life as an undertaker.From shoot-outs at funerals to dead men screaming and runaway corpses, undertakers have plenty of unusual stories to tell—and a special way of telling them.In this macabre and moving compilation, funeral directors across the country share their most embarrassing, jaw-dropping, irreverent, and deeply poignant stories about life at death’s do...

Pulitzer Prize FinalistFrom the bestselling author of The Circle and The Eyes and the Impossibles comes the “profoundly moving, occasionally angry, and often hilarious” (The New York Times Book Review) memoir chronicling Dave Eggers’s life after losing both of his parents within a span of five weeks.When twenty-one-year-old Dave Eggers loses both of his parents within weeks of each other, he suddenly becomes the p...

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author's "astonishing" debut novel, about a son's struggle to find his own identity and integrity ( The New York Times).Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Moonglow, and The Yiddish Policeman's Union, is one of the most acclaimed talents in contemporary fiction. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, published when Chabon was just twenty-five, is the beautifully crafted d...

From This American Life alum David Rakoff comes a hilarious collection that single-handedly raises self-deprecation to an art form. Whether impersonating Sigmund Freud in a department store window during the holidays, climbing an icy mountain in cheap loafers, or learning primitive survival skills in the wilds of New Jersey, Rakoff clearly demonstrates how he doesn’t belong–nor does he try to.In his debut collection of essays, Rakoff uses his razor-sharp wit and snarky hum...

“Killing yourself at any age is a seriously tricky business. But when I was seven, the odds felt insurmountable.”As a young girl, Terri Cheney’s life looked perfect. Her family lived in a lovely house in a tranquil Los Angeles suburb where the geraniums never once failed to bloom. She was pretty and smart, an academic superstar and popular cheerleader whose father doted on her. But starting with her first suicide attempt at age seven, it was clear that her...

In this collection of twenty-one unforgettable stories, Joyce Carol Oates explores the mysterious private lives of men and women with vivid, unsparing precision and sympathy. By turns interlocutor and interpreter, magician and realist, she dissects the psyches of ordinary people and their potential for good and evil with chilling understatement and lasting power.

From the author to the reader:Show-and-Tell was the very best part of school for me, both as a student and as a teacher.As a kid, I put more into getting ready for my turn to present than I put into the rest of my homework. Show-and-Tell was real in a way that much of what I learned in school was not. It was education that came out of my life experience.As a teacher, I was always surprised by what I learned from these amateur hours. A kid I...

A touching memoir of life with an alcoholic father who secretly works with the CIA, a dark pilgrimage through the valley of depression and addiction, and finding a faith to redeem and a strength to forgive."This is a record of my life as I remember it—but more importantly, as I felt it."At the age of sixteen, Ian Morgan Cron was told by his mother that his father, a motion picture executive, worked with the CIA in Europe. This astonishing revelatio...

In the newest edition of Best Gay Stories, editor Steve Berman has selected confessions and stories that range in scope from “S”—sensational—to “XL”—extra-liberating: a personal remembrance of the Stonewall Riots; a tale of awkward first love; the allure of Tadzio for not only Gustav von Aschenbach but every reader of Thomas Mann; the wisdom of Auntie Mame. 21 stories in all.

**White's poised yet scalding autobiographical novel is the story of a young man's coming of age in 1950s and 60s America."With intelligence, candor, humor--and anger--White explores the most insidious aspects of oppression.... An impressive novel."--Washington Post book World**The country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men. Moving from a Midwestern college to the Stonewall Tavern on the night of the first gay...

Three heart-stopping supernatural thrillers from the master of suspense.BREATHLESS: A thrilling novel of suspense and adventure, as the lives of strangers converge around a mystery unfolding high in the in the Colorado mountains—and the balance of the world begins to tilt…WHAT THE NIGHT KNOWS: A ghost story like no other you have read. In the Calvinos, Dean Koontz brings to life a family that might be your own, in a war for their survival against an adversary more malevolen...