With debts to dangerous men piling up, he becomes an unwilling recruit for a Cincinnati gangster needing an expendable tool to recover his stolen cash and railroad bonds.

    Meemaw has been a doting mother, grandmother, and church mother to her community. Suddenly she's become a slimmed-down, silver-haired, seventy-something fox with a new attitude. And all fingers are pointing at a much younger ex-pro football player, GoGo Walker. When D.C. lawyer Garvin Daniels -- Meemaw's granddaughter -- gets wind of what's happening, she heads back to her hometown determined to help her Meemaw get it together before she goes too far.

    Davis Prize for Fiction "Storm Riders examines the conflicted love of a single father struggling to raise his adopted Native American son, who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. When a small girl mysteriously drowns near a student-housing complex, the boy is implicated and the father wrestles with his own doubt, guilt, and responsibility. Bringing to life the austere beauty of the Tlingit Alaskan village of the boy's family, as well as the highly educated pockets of the East Coast, Lesley vividly portrays a father and a son struggling to come to terms with each other and above all, with the truth. This novel, as "The Chicago Tribune noted, is "a powerful tale with a strong emotional core."

    In building this impressive life for herself, she has tried to shed the one thing she cannot: her family back in landlocked Cleveland. Her adored brother, Tick, was her childhood ally as they watched their drinking father push away all the love that his wife and children were trying to give him. Now Tick himself has been coming apart and demands to be heard.Weaving four voices into a beautiful tapestry, Southgate charts the lives of the Hendersons from the parents' first charmed meeting to Josie's realization that the ways of the human heart are more complex than anything seen under a microscope.

    Never been to a movie. Never played baseball with a real team. Never got over feeling guilty for the loss of his brother. But change is in the air. Billy discovers he has a natural talent for baseball, especially as a pitcher. Maybe, just maybe, there's more in store for him than life on the farm. But can Billy convince his father of that? Or is he destined to spend the rest of his life pitching nothing but hay?Teenager Billy Baggs is desperately needed on his family's struggling dairy farm, but he's also an extraordinarily gifted natural baseball player. How he struggles to reconcile his father's desire to keep him on the farm with his coach's interest in getting him on the field is at the heart of this ‘meaty story.… The complex characters grow and change in profoundly real ways.''K. ‘[With] flashes of humor, a wealth of lovingly recounted details evokes the difficult daily life on a small dairy farm.''Publishers Weekly. 1994 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)1994 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)1993 "Pick of the Lists" (ABA)

    Her family inhabits the upper echelon of Black society and when she falls for no-name Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves. In 1982, Evelyn’s daughter, Jackie, is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent husband’s drug addiction. Just as she comes to terms with his abandoning the family, he returns, ready to resume their old life. Jackie must decide if the promise of her husband is worth the near certainty he’ll leave again. Jackie’s son, T.C., loves the creative process of growing marijuana more than the weed itself. He finds something hypnotic about training the seedlings, testing the levels, trimming the leaves, drying the buds. He was a square before Hurricane Katrina, but the New Orleans he knew didn’t survive the storm, and in its wake he was changed too. Now, fresh out of a four-month stint for possession with the intent to distribute, he decides to start over—until an old friend convinces him to stake his new beginning on one last deal. For Evelyn, Jim Crow is an ongoing reality, and in its wake new threats spring up to haunt her descendants. A Kind of Freedom is an urgent novel that explores the legacy of racial disparity in the South through a poignant and redemptive family history.

    His grand-nephew, Ptolemy's only connection to the outside world, was recently killed in a drive-by shooting, and Ptolemy is too suspicious of anyone else to allow them into his life. until he meets Robyn, his niece's seventeen-year-old lodger and the only one willing to take care of an old man at his grandnephew's funeral. But Robyn will not tolerate Ptolemy's hermitlike existence. She challenges him to interact more with the world around him, and he grasps more firmly onto his disappearing consciousness. However, this new activity pushes Ptolemy into the fold of a doctor touting an experimental drug that guarantees Ptolemy won't live to see age ninety- two but that he'll spend his last days in feverish vigor and clarity. With his mind clear, what Ptolemy finds-in his own past, in his own apartment, and in the circumstances surrounding his grand-nephew's death-is shocking enough to spur an old man to action, and to ensure a legacy that no one will forget. In The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Mosley captures the compromised state of his protagonist's mind with profound sensitivity and insight, and creates an unforgettable pair of characters at the center of a novel that is sure to become a true contemporary classic.

    Change is in the air and hope is running high. And for twenty-five-year-old, self-proclaimed cool man Michael Bishop, so is the alcohol and the bluster. Working a dead-end job proofing subtitles on third-rate videos, Michael has kept his future at bay through a stream of boozy nights or by blowing time in front of his Nintendo. That is, until he meets Ivy Chase, the smart, pretty pastor’s daughter whose innocent charm takes his breath away. But Ivy turns out to be much more than Michael bargained for, and in a moment that surprises even him, he makes the decision of his life.Smart, funny, poignant, and very, very timely, Last Call in the City of Bridges is a Bright Lights, Big City for the new millennium. With its memorable characters and unforgettable scenes, this insightful look into twenty-first-century America is a book you won’t want to put down.“Like the comic book heroes he obsesses over, Michael Bishop has an origin story, the story of the first wound that makes his powers necessary. In Last Call in the City of Bridges, Michael at last faces into that tragedy, resurfacing suddenly at the mid-point of his twenties, those years of snark and expectation spent proofreading DVD subtitles, drinking literature-themed cocktails, and pining over preacher’s daughters and college crushes. In this witty and charming debut, Salvatore Pane reminds us that while you can’t retcon your past, you can perhaps learn to live up to its responsibilities, by using your powers not necessarily to save the ones you love from loss, but to care for those left behind in its wake.”–Matt Bell, author of Cataclysm Baby“Quite obviously, Salvatore Pane’s mind has been dunked in video games, social media, comic books, the WebNet, and everything else our august literary authorities believe promote illiteracy. I’d like to hand the authorities Pane’s novel–a funny, moving, melancholy, sad, and immensely literate book about what being young and confused feels like these days–and tell them, ‘See? Things are going to be fine!’”-Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives and Magic Hours“Last Call in the City of Bridges is Goodbye, Columbus 2.0, a poignant novel about looking for something real in a plastic world where Irony is Everything. This generational anthem is ultimately, despite all the 21st century detritus, an old-fashioned page turner, full of old verities and truths of the heart. Salvatore Pane’s voice is both new and necessary, one I know I’ll be reading for years to come.”–Cathy Day, author of The Circus in Winter and Comeback Season“Salvatore Pane is the acknowledged Hipster Prince of Pittsburgh, PA, which is the acknowledged Paris of Middle America. If his publishers had taken my advice they would have titled his groundbreaking first novel: A Hipster’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Book of Laughter and Longing. His very humorous novel is voice and character driven, a virtual page turner. Yet for all its humor, the novel has an underpinning of real humanity. I was laughing out loud while at the same time gritting my teeth in shared, profoundly recalled embarrassment.”-Chuck Kinder, author of Honeymooners and Last Mountain Dancer“Like his post po-mo Facebook generation, Michael Bishop, the manic narrator of Last Call in the City of Bridges, has reached the end of his irresponsible youth. Stuck and unsure, he looks back at those eight-bit Nintendo years with tender nostalgia while trying to feel his way forward. Like The Moviegoer, Salvatore Pane’s debut novel is a romantic ironist’s plea for authenticity in a fantastic age. It’s telling–and hilarious–that his hero’s model for male adulthood isn’t William Holden but Super Mario.”–Stewart O’Nan, author of The Odds: A Love Story and Snow Angels

    She had a family that loved her and all of the advantages that came from being rich, smart and beautiful. She also had friends, one of which was Tameka Williams. Tameka was a desperate woman looking to gain fortune, fame and love at any cost. It didn't matter who she hurt or used as long as she got what she wanted in the end. Despite the warnings from others, Brook took Tameka in and tried to love her as a sister. However, after taking the one thing that meant the most to Brook, it was time for the tables to turn. Tameka had used and betrayed her for the last time.

    It provides exclusive access to the greatest pleasure mankind has ever known. There's just one problem. Membership is fatal. When two terminally bored Hollywood superstars hear an urban legend that some English students have discovered the secret of ultimate pleasure, they come to London to discover if the rumours are true. They employ young socialite Sophie York to help them. Sophie is a forgotten Reality TV contestant and a self-styled entertainment consultant. She thinks she's landed the job of her dreams but when she and her famous clients collide head on with Oxford University's richest, smartest and most sinister students, it soon becomes a nightmare. The Millionaires' Death Club is a chick lit thriller...with the wickedest of twists.

    A tryst of bondage.  A lover's murder.  Investigator Jon Frederick returns in a search to uncover the identity of a killer creeping through communities along I-94 in Minnesota, targeting couples who store their fetish photos online.  The killer taunts Jon with hidden messages embedded  in local media that lead him to Sonia, a young woman with a terrible secret.  A fast-paced thriller based on the profile of a true-life serial murderer, The I-94 Murders  guides the reader with an insider's light along the dark road of a killer.

     With no home, or family, he heads west in pursuit of revenge. There he will not only find purpose in killing the men responsible for destroying his life but will also uncover that justice is not as simple as life or death. VENGEANCE ROAD is book one in THE WANDERER series.

    With shimmering prose and mesmerizing precision, David Chariandy takes us inside the lives of Michael and Francis. They are the sons of Trinidadian immigrants, their father has disappeared and their mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home. Coming of age in The Park, a cluster of town houses and leaning concrete towers in the disparaged outskirts of a sprawling city, Michael and Francis battle against the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry -- teachers stream them into general classes; shopkeepers see them only as thieves; and strangers quicken their pace when the brothers are behind them. Always Michael and Francis escape into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness that cuts through their neighbourhood, where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves. Propelled by the pulsing beats and styles of hip hop, Francis, the older of the two brothers, dreams of a future in music. Michael's dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow.With devastating emotional force David Chariandy, a unique and exciting voice in Canadian literature, crafts a heartbreaking and timely story about the profound love that exists between brothers and the senseless loss of lives cut short with the shot of a gun.

    He certainly thought there'd be more to it than his ramshackle Oklahoma farm and a mundane job coaching basketball at his old high school. He questions his fatherhood skills too: his oldest son won't speak to him, his younger son wants to quit the basketball team, and now his daughter wants to go out on dates. He loves his wife, but the marriage has settled into complacency. Now his twentieth high school reunion looms and he has agreed to play in an exhibition game at the reunion, which is sure to be a wretched joke. And his ex-girlfriend's back in town, newly single. Twenty years is plenty long enough for a man to mope after what might have been. It's time for John to make himself understand that.Professor of English at Baylor University, Greg Garrett is an award-winning author of both fiction and nonfiction. His critically acclaimed novel Free Bird was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the best first novels of 2002. He resides in Austin, Texas.

    John McNally tells the story of two unlucky people who forge an improbable yet possibly life-saving connection in a world overshadowed by the Patriot Act and No Child Left Behind -- a world in which hulking government bureaucracies and vast corporations join forces to numb the populace into apathy with various standardization and surveillance programs. But McNally sees hope in the daily experiences of his characters: sometimes, haphazardly, by going about their own very particular lives, people circumvent the official program and begin to actively claim lives of freedom and dignity. "America's Report Card" is an arresting and humane portrait of life taking place in the margins, outside the stunted imagination of government and media. As in his critically acclaimed novel "The Book of Ralph", McNally dazzles with characters like Jainey O'Sullivan -- a lonely, confused, purple-and-green-haired sometime truant, Jainey cares so little about high school that on her final standardized test, she writes an essay heaping scorn on the test administrators even as she asks her faceless reader for help. Charlie Wolf leads a fairy-tale graduate student life, with just enough money and clout to keep him in books, vodka, a threadbare apartment, and a beautiful, intellectual girlfriend. But the bohemian dream starts to crumble when Charlie takes a job scoring standardized tests and finds himself surrounded by people who are either plodding blindly along or caught up in wild conspiracy theories.When Charlie and Jainey stumble upon one another, they also stumble upon their own bravery and compassion. They try to protect each other from their habitual bad luck and the shadowy threats lurking at the edges of their lives, and what ensues doesn't follow any prescribed course.The official version of American life today may get the broad strokes and primary colors right, but "America's Report Card" reveals how the government and the media overlook the corners and shadows where our individual realities unfold all too often in chaotic, precarious, and bewildering ways. This wholly original, wildly entertaining novel mirrors our part in the dark but frequently redemptive comedy that is life.