With its cast of train-hopping, drug-dealing, glue-huffing lowlifes, Scott Sparling's debut--an homage to the American crime novel--chronicles the lives of damaged people doing their meager best and often finding the worst.Wire to Wire assembles a cast of train-hopping, drug-dealing, glue-huffing lowlifes, in a stunning homage to one of our most popular enduring genres—the American crime novel. While riding a freight car through Detroit, Michael Slater suffers a ne...

This book’s primary purpose is to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, a seminal book in classical liberal thought. Persian Letters is a delightfully rich, sympathetic satire of commercial society’s promise and discontents, covering a wide range of issues and themes that shaped the direction of liberal modernity. It consists of a series of letters largely written by two Persian travelers to Paris, who allow modern readers to view Parisian life from the perspe...

A current of longing runs through twenty-two short stories by Oregon writers. As the characters strive for connection, they make mistakes, reach out to the wrong people, and recalibrate their lives based on what they desire, whether or not it’s attainable-or even a good idea. Editor Liz Prato has curated a powerful collection of smart, funny, sad, and exquisite stories about the losses that shape our lives.

**#1 New York Times bestseller!In this unforgettable collection of essays, acclaimed humorist David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface.**Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother's wedding. He mops his sister's floor. He gives directions to a lost traveler. He eats a hamburger. He has his blood sugar tested. It all so...

**An astonishing memoir from the author of The Paris Wife and When the Stars Go Dark, detailing the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s."Demonstrates the true meaning of family." —Chicago Tribune**As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next 14 years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an un...

The most celebrated story collection from “one of the true American masters” (The New York Review of Books)—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark that includes the iconic and much-referenced title story featured in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman."Raymond Carver's America is ... clouded by pain and the loss of dreams, but it is not as fragile as it looks. It is a place of survivors and a place...

The acclaimed author "assembles a stellar collection of twenty stories that create their own worlds in twenty pages or less" ( USA Today ).Tom Perrotta explains in his introduction that "all of [these stories] took me somewhere I didn't expect to go, and jolted me into that state of heightened awareness and emotional receptivity that's one of the great rewards of reading good fiction."In Nathan Englander s What We ...

She thought she’d have more time. Laurie Notaro figured she had at least a few good years left. But no–it’s happened. She has officially lost her marbles. From the kid at the pet-food store checkout line whose coif is so bizarre it makes her seethe “I’m going to kick his hair’s ass!” to the hapless Sears customer-service rep on the receiving end of her Campaign of Terror, no one is safe from Laurie’s wrath. Her cranky side seems to have eaten the rest of her–inner-thigh Chub Rub and all. A...

IT’S LAURIE NOTARO’S HOLIDAY HANDBOOK.PREPARE TO LAUGH YOUR TINSEL OFF.It’s the most wonderful–and most dreadful–season of the year, when boxes of truffles attack your thighs, drunken holiday revelers stay long past their welcome, and your grandmother has conniptions at the department store over the price of hand lotion. Welcome to Laurie Notaro’s Christmastime.In ten brand-new stories and three previously published favorites, Notaro shares the sidesplitting daily d...

These poems topics range from hate crimes to playgrounds, from international conflict to hometowns, from falling in love to the desperation of loneliness. Gibsons work seizes us by the collar and hauls us inside some of her darkest moments, then releases us out the other side. 

Ever since Jack can remember, his mom has been unpredictable, sometimes loving and fun, other times caught in a whirlwind of energy and "spinning" wildly until its over. But Jack never thought his mom would take off during the night and leave him at a campground in Acadia National Park, with no way to reach her and barely enough money for food. Any other kid would report his mom gone, but Jack knows by now that he needs to figure things out for himself - starting with how to get from the b...

The new face of evil.Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado boasts one of the most beautiful and deepest canyons in the United States. For twelve-year-old Brian Garrett, a weekend camping trip in the park promises to be an opportunity to bond with his aloof parents. But after his father suffers a horrible accident during a hike to the chasm's floor, events spiral quickly out of control, and over the next twenty-four hours Brian will uncover a terrif...