As we read, each of our senses is engaged, and we come to detect a search for spiritual revelations--in buildings, churches, homes, trains, and cars. Then suddenly we find ourselves back in the open, pursuing the course to Baltimore and Bucharest, to the zoo and the park, to the past and future. As ever, Ashbery's wakeful digressions are wily, comic, heartbreaking, and vertiginous.

    They illuminate the gritty idiosyncrasies of immigrant life in urban barrios spanning Los Angeles to Chicago to Harlem. Rodríguez lends powerful voices to those struggling to keep the gas on, to find work, and to keep love.  Populated by a vibrant cast of characters, ranging from the drugged, to the eccentric, to the heartbroken, Rodríguez’s poems protest capitalism, violence, and exploitation while reveling in the potential of compassion.

    But when her perfect husband turns out to be a lying, cheating slimeball—and bad in bed to boot—Savannah kicks the jerk to the curb and embarks on life on her own terms. With a new apartment, a new career, and a brand new outlook on life, she’s all set to take the world by storm. If only the world would stop throwing her curveballs... KICKOUT CLAUSE - #7 When Shelby Ferguson, Savannah’s ex-husband’s new wife, begs Savannah’s help in figuring out what’s going on with Bradley, Savannah can’t in good conscience say no. Shelby has no one else to turn to, no one to whom she can admit that her marriage is on the rocks and that Bradley may be straying. But helping Shelby turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg. With two different sets of buyers vying to purchase Mrs. Jenkins’s house, and an escaped prisoner targeting Savannah, she has more than enough to deal with. And that’s before TBI rookie Manny Ortega is shot down in cold blood. With Savannah’s boyfriend Rafe Collier, and their friend, homicide detective Tamara Grimaldi, busy looking for Manny’s murderer, it’s up to Savannah to juggle buyers and adulterers and vandals and lawyers, and come out on top... without losing her Southern Belle poise or her life in the process. PAST DUE - #8 The sins of the past are coming due, and someone has to pay... Savannah Martin’s high school reunion is supposed to be a fun weekend of catching up with old friends and parading her boyfriend—Sweetwater bad boy Rafael Collier—in front of everyone who used to sneer at him back in the day. Not even the daily battle she’s waging with morning sickness can douse Savannah’s anticipation. But when Rafe won’t come to Sweetwater, Savannah has to face her old schoolmates without his support. And her best friend Charlotte isn’t as happy for Savannah’s new relationship as Savannah had hoped. And when a dead body turns up in the Colliers’ old mobile home in the Bog, Savannah is thankful to be on her own. The sheriff is always looking for a reason to shove Rafe back behind bars, and a fresh homicide is just the excuse he needs. But when another murder takes place at the reunion, even the threat of jail can’t keep Rafe away. Soon old classmates are dropping like bowling pins, and Rafe and Savannah are scrambling to catch up with a killer hell bent on making sure old enemies pay for old sins... all while trying to stay one step ahead of Sheriff Satterfield and the Columbia PD. DIRTY DEEDS - #9 With hotels in downtown filled to capacity months in advance, real estate agent Savannah Martin decides to pick up some extra money renting out her empty East Nashville apartment. She’s living with her boyfriend, and the place is just sitting there, begging to be put to use. But when her latest tenant ends up dead—strangled in Savannah’s bed by what might have been a paying customer—the promise of easy money quickly turns sour. As the hunt for the killer leads to their shared hometown of Sweetwater, Tennessee, Savannah’s boyfriend, TBI agent Rafe Collier, is tapped to help with the investigation.

    It came to little, being no more than that I should miss love and fortune in the sunlight and find them in the rain. The woman was a haggard, black-faced gypsy, and when my mother asked for more she turned on her heel and spoke gibberish; for which she was presently driven out of the place by Tarn Roberton, the baillie, and the village dogs. But the thing stuck in my memory, and together with the fact that I was a Thursday's bairn, and so, according to the old rhyme, "had far to go," convinced me long ere I had come to man's estate that wanderings and surprises would be my portion.It is in the rain that this tale begins. I was just turned of eighteen, and in the back-end of a dripping September set out from our moorland house of Auchencairn to complete my course at Edinburgh College. The year was 1685, an ill year for our countryside; for the folk were at odds with the King's Government, about religion, and the land was full of covenants and repressions. Small wonder that I was backward with my colleging. . . .

    

    Rudolfo Anaya returns to the deeply spiritual themes of his hugely popular Bless Me, Ultima with this insightful tale of a prophet and his message to save humankind from itself.

    Truscott IV, " says the Chicago Tribune. Now, the author who first took readers behind the imposing walls of West Point with "Dress Gray" returns to his alma mater with a tense, timely tale of corruption and courage -- as a female cadet collapses and dies while parading past the reviewing stand on a hot September morning, sending Superintendent Ry Slaight, as well as his cadet daughter, on the dangerous trail of the truth.

    In many ways, this war, and the subsequent peace of Westphalia, would set the stage for the balance of power in Europe until the First World War in 1914. Fully illustrated to capture both the majesty and the horror of The Thirty Years' War.

    F. Freedman presents The Obstacle Course, a coming-of-age story that recounts the adventures of a colorful, profane, street-smart, and appealing fifteen-year-old boy growing up in 1957 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Roy Poole has to be smart because he is almost always on his own. His father is a drinker, womanizer, and wife-beater. His mother can't cope with her husband or her children; Roy copes by running with his own gang, whose escapades sometimes border on the criminal. And this young man is eminently available when the girls come after him, which is often. But there is another side to Roy. He builds model ships and regularly hitchhikes to Annapolis to run the Naval Academy's grueling obstacle course. For Roy Poole's one ambition in life, his consuming dream, is to become a midshipman. One day, like a gift from heaven, Roy meets a retired admiral who also builds model ships. The admiral is immediately attracted to the youngster, and he becomes almost a second father to the boy. Admiral Wells arranges for Roy to be admitted to a military prep school that sends most of its graduates to the Naval Academy. And then, suddenly, Roy's innocence brings about an explosion in this exotic world he has entered. Embittered and lost, Roy strikes out blindly for parts unknown. And on that adventure, particularly in an encounter with members of a black church, people that he, a Southerner in the fifties, has never known except as stereotypes, he begins the process of understanding that offers him a chance for his own redemption. This powerful and gritty coming-of-age novel will evoke memories of Holden Caulfield and Huck Finn. It also bears comparison to the novels of Pat Conroy. Best of all, The Obstacle Course confirms Freedman's talent for telling a compelling story in a full and rich original voice that marks him as a novelist with a limitless future.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    But what of its opposite -- the moment when it becomes clear that things are indisputably over? Dumped is a survey of every type of romantic crack-up, a group of stories full of the hilarity, wisdom, insight, and sometimes, yes, fierce revenges of some of the most memorable broken hearts in recent literature. Dumped sheds light on what can be the toughest part of human relations -- whether newly elucidating the misery we've all endured, or merely reminding us that others have had it far worse -- from the mother in Elizabeth Berg's Open House absurdly attempting to tell her son his father has left, to the betrayed wife in Roald Dahl's "Lamb to Slaughter," who beats her husband to death with a leg of lamb, then cooks it for the police. With contributions from such notable authors as Will Self, Saul Bellow, Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, Dorothy Parker, Andre Dubus, and Tobias Wolff, as well as rising stars like Lucinda Rosenfeld and Steve Almond, Dumped spans every variety of romantic catastrophe and every possible response to it; from the wise to the hilarious, the bitter to the bittersweet. This book is the panacea for problems of the heart.

    He meets up with a childhood friend who is black, and together they battle against a platoon of Klansmen for the literal salvation of a local preacher.

    *An active Table of Contents has been added by the publisher for a better customer experience. *This book has been checked and corrected for spelling errors. This Publication Contains 34 of P. G. Wodehouse's All Time Greatest Works. A Fully Interactive Table of Contents Has Been Added For Easy Navigation. Table of Contents P. G. Wodehouse Biography Early Life and Career Reluctant Banker; Budding Writer: 1900–08 Psmith, Blandings, Wooster and Jeeves: 1908–15 Broadway: 1915–19 1920s Hollywood: 1929–31 Best-seller: 1930s Second World War: Internment and Broadcasts Aftermath: Reactions and Investigation American exile: 1946–75 Works Included: A Damsel in Distress A MAN OF MEANS A Prefect's Uncle THE ADVENTURES OF SALLY INDISCRETIONS OF ARCHIE JILL THE RECKLESS LOVE AMONG THE CHICKENS Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories MIKE Mike and Psmith MY MAN JEEVES Not George Washington Piccadilly Jim Psmith in the City Psmith Journalist SOMETHING NEW Tales of St. Austin's THE GIRL ON THE BOAT THE GOLD BAT THE WHITE FEATHER The Clicking of Cuthbert The Coming of Bill The Gem Collector The Head of Kay's The Intrusion of Jimmy The Little Nugget The Little Warrior The Man Upstairs The Pothunters The Prince and Betty The Swoop! Or, How Clarence Saved England Three Men and a Maid Uneasy Money William Tell Told Again

    

    Pepper's cover, Terry Southern was an audacious original. Now Dig This is a journey through Terry Southern's America, from the buttoned-down '50s through the sexual revolution, rock 'n' roll, and independent cinema (which he helped inaugurate by cowriting and producing Easy Rider), up to his death in 1995. It spans Southern's stellar career, from early short stories and a Paris Review interview with Henry Green, to his legendary Esquire piece covering the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention with Jean Genet and William Burroughs and his equally infamous account of life neck-high in girls and cocaine aboard The Rolling Stones' tour jet, to his memories of twentieth-century legends like Abbie Hoffman, Kurt Vonnegut, and Stanley Kubrick, with whom he wrote Dr. Strangelove. "A voice electric with street rhythm and royal with offhand intellection ... stuffed with strange and silken scraps." -- Troy Patterson, Entertainment Weekly "The subterranean Texan's finest moments are exquisite reads ... like a hot poker in the eye of conventional narrative." -- A. D. Amorosi, Philadelphia City Paper "The range of writing ... [was] as lethal as Mailer claimed and still awaiting the attention it deserves." -- Charles Taylor, Newsday "... reveals a writer defined by his generosity, by the pursuit of fun and by an insatiable ... literary appetite...." -- Claire Dederer, The New York Times Book Review