Despite his mother's plans for him to attend college in Chicago, he has no desire to leave home. One autumn, in a camp of migrant farm workers, Martin discovers a music that touches him like nothing before -- the unsettling melodies and timeless words of the country blues. He also falls in love with Corinna, the daughter of the black foreman who runs the orchards. He ends up fathering her child, only to lose her in a stunning betrayal. Martin's music and his love for Corinna are the two themes of his life. His struggle to combine them in a single story takes him far from home and the life he had always envisioned for himself, only to bring him back again in a way he could never have imagined. In this beautifully rendered novel, Robert Hellenga explores the fragility of happiness, the struggle to discover one's true calling in life, and the sorrows and satisfactions of family.

    One follows Joanna Aronson as she cares for her father, Clyde, during his latest struggle with cancer while butting heads with her stepmother, Brenda, a cold woman whom Joanna suspects of neglecting him and even trying to kill him. Interspersed are Joanna’s memories of growing up in suburban Baltimore with her sister and parents in the ’60s, a life that seems idyllic yet seethes with subterranean discontents. Clyde, an English teacher, dominates the family with his charisma but undermines it with his affairs, including a liaison with one of Joanna’s teenage acquaintances. Joanna’s mother, Evie, feels trapped in housewifery and longs for the fulfillment she felt as a Communist Party activist. Joanna, though drawn like Clyde to the life of the mind, feels slighted because of his wish that she had been a boy. A colleague of her father’s seduces her at age 14. Threading through the story is Clyde’s memoir of growing up with his brother, Harry, in New York’s National Hebrew Orphan Home after his father abandoned the family and his mother placed the two boys there in 1924. It’s a Dickensian story of cold, hunger, loneliness, frequent beatings, and sexual abuse, but it’s lit with friendships and intellectual ambitions. Cherubin’s bittersweet tale is an epic and indelible character study of Clyde from frightened cub to kvetching lion in winter, with overtones of King Lear and an occasional queasily incestuous vibe. She writes in evocative prose that mixes astringent reality with glowing reverie. (“I sized up the three agents,” recalls Evie of a visit from the FBI during the Joseph McCarthy era. “Cold, smug, and bored. They could not begin to understand how alive I was during the war, how urgent and meaningful my life was thanks to the CP. How engaged I was with the world… I still miss those days.”) As Joanna grapples with her clan’s vexed legacy, the author shows how both betrayal and forgiveness can propagate across generations.An alternately dark and luminous, wounded and affectionate portrait of a family in crisis.

    Education? Check. Good job? Check. Down payment for a nice house? Check. Dating marriage material? Check, check, and check. With a coveted position as a local news reporter, a "paper-perfect" boyfriend, and even a standing Saturday morning appointment with a reliable hairstylist, everything seems to be falling into place.Then Tabby receives an unexpected diagnosis that brings her picture-perfect life crashing down, jeopardizing the keystone she took for granted: having children. With her dreams at risk of falling through the cracks of her checklist, suddenly she is faced with an impossible choice between her career, her dream home, and a family of her own.With the help of her best friends, the irreverent and headstrong Laila and Alexis, the mom jeans-wearing former "Sexy Lexi," and the generational wisdom of her grandmother and the nonagenarian firebrand Ms. Gretchen, Tabby explores the reaches of modern medicine and tests the limits of her relationships, hoping to salvage the future she always dreamed of. But the fight is all consuming, demanding a steep price that forces an honest reckoning for nearly everyone in her life. As Tabby soon learns, her grandmother's age-old adage just might still be true: Black girls must die exhausted.

    This 50th Anniversary edition contains a new foreword by his publisher and friend, Jay Shore, and an introduction by his sister, Diane Craddock, as well as a selection of photos, drawings and other writings by Craddock."Superb in the tradition of Kerouac’s On The Road, with overtones of Ken Kesey and Hunter Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, but Craddock’s style is all his own." — Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times"The definitive book of the acid-freak movement. A psychedelic pilgrim’s progress of beauty, intelligence, sensitivity." — Joseph Haas, Chicago Daily News"An astounding book, so good it defies praise. The writing is superb. Craddock is a born writer with an iceberg of talent." — Shane Stevens, Chicago Sun Times"Willam J. Craddock’s masterpiece, legendary to those in the know, is as exhilarating now as ever." — Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen, long listed for the 2016 National Book AwardMostly autobiographical, Be Not Content begins with the 16-year-old Craddock riding his beloved Harley Davidson with the Hells Angels, the outlaw motorcycle club, and getting into brawls and being chased by the cops. It’s an unexpected anomaly for this bright, middle-class kid from Los Gatos, California. Craddock then takes us through his college days publishing an underground newspaper, attending poetry readings with Alan Ginsberg, tripping at one of the first acid tests, and taking for days on end the strongest, most pure doses LSD. All of it done for the purpose of Craddock discovering the meaning of life.Barely 21 when he finished writing it, Doubleday bought the book in 1968 but held up publication until 1970. The first edition sold out with collectors prizing the few copies available, and copies going for as much as $950 on the Internet. Be Not Content is a powerful literary coming of age narrative that millions of Americans can personally identify with – an unforgettable time in the cultural and sociological history of America.

    She will not meet the handsome stable lad, Tom O’Brien, until much later.When Alexandra returns home, her father remarries and she is forced to become a maid-of-all-work. Alexandra makes a success of her new life and meets the lovely Bob Atkins. Meanwhile, Tom O’Brien has become impassioned with the beautiful Lady Florazel Compton who introduces him to the sophistications of 1950’s London. Sadly, Alexandra’s contentment with Bob is short lived and Tom comes back into her life.But the past seems destined to wreck the happiness of the present, as the still beautiful Lady Florazel is determined to re-capture her former love and destroy the magic hour of Tom and Alexandra’s meeting.

    After John Sayre starts slipping off at odd hours from the family farm, his wife Frances begins to suspect that he's joined a newly-revived chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. By the time their young son discovers the corpse of a lynched black man along the side of a nearby dirt road, Frances Sayre has had enough. But John hasn't joined the ranks of the murderous KKK as his wife fears. Just the same, John's secret has the potential to destroy their marriage, if not so much more. What comes to pass over those heated days of summer, none on any side could have imagined, or wanted.

    Still haunted by the death of his young son, stalled in his writing career and overfond of the bottle, he finds himself abandoned by his wife for the summer - or, if he doesn't shape up, for good.

    Their investigative trail will carry them from the West Coast to the East, to D.C., New York, and the social whirl of Martha's Vineyard as the summer season reaches its peak. In the middle of dissed colleagues, dumped girlfriends, disgruntled ex-employees, and the legions of enemies Ev managed to accumulate before he died, Alex Powell realizes that before everything is over Everett Carson might not be the only person who ends up with a toe tag.

    As he witnesses a shoplifter foiled by a combination of the owner's beady eye and the surveillance camera under the counter, Alex Seymour starts thinking about the reality and the fragility of his own seemingly perfect domestic situation, and what he does not see. With a son he suspects is stealing, a daughter whose first boyfriend may be going too far, and a wife he thinks is being unfaithful, Alex needs something to help him find out the truth and put him back in control. Enter Sherry Thomas, the mysterious Managing Director of Cyclops, a surveillance shop, and the catalyst for Alex Seymour's descent into a world ruled by cameras, tapes, lies and deceit, with devastating consequences. A gripping story of suspense that mirrors modern preoccupations with surveillance, tabloid voyeurism and morality.