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...

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...

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.

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.

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...

With sharp wit, self-deprecating humor, and penetrating honesty, New York Times journalist Dave Itzkoff turns a keen eye on his life with the mysterious, maddening, much-loved man of whom he writes, “for the first eight years of my life I seem to have believed he was the product of my imagination.”Itzkoff’s father was the man who lumbered home at night and spent hours murmuring to his small son about his dreams and hopes for the boy’s future, and the fears and failures of ...

Like Kofi Annan, Larry Miller is one of the most irresistible comic personalities working today. Known for years as an actor, writer, comedian, and sexual pioneer, he's gained a new following as a cultural commentator and frequent guest on political shows. Now, in Spoiled Rotten America, he fixes his gaze on what's funny about our daily lives—which includes, roughly speaking, everything. From middle-aged drinking ("When you're in your twenties, you can drink all night and bungee-jump off a...

First published in 1967, Stop-Time was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of modern American autobiography, a brilliant portrayal of one boy's passage from childhood to adolescence and beyond. Here is Frank Conroy's wry, sad, beautiful tale of life on the road; of odd jobs and lost friendships, brutal schools and first loves; of a father's early death and a son's exhilarating escape into manhood.

A memoir of what it was like to be a teenager in a tumultuous era, from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Best of Us.Joyce Maynard was eighteen years old when her 1972 New York Times Magazine cover story catapulted her to national prominence. Published one year later, Looking Back is her remarkable follow-up—part memoir, part cultural history, and part social critique. She wrote about diving under her desk for air-raid...

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children. Ever since that first real-life performance, Galloway has used theater, whe...