Lamb, an ordinary man who leads an ordinary life, until a chance encounter leads to him experiencing the world through the eyes of various animals. Thorne Smith again shows his mastery of the comic fantasy tale as Lamb lurches from one mishap to another, reeling from his wife's abandonment and the actions of his headstrong daughter and reveling in the new opportunities that his excursions into animal form provide.

    This satirical novel tells the story of the surgical transformation of a dog into a man, and is an obvious criticism of Soviet society, especially the new rich that arose after the Bolshevik revolution.

    The thief then leaves, and the patrons all survive, but strange things soon begin to happen to them: One survivor’s tattoo jumps off her ankle and chases her around; another wakes up to find that she’s made of candy; and Stacey Hinterland discovers that she’s shrinking, incrementally, a little every day, and nothing that her husband or son do can reverse the process. The Tiny Wife is a fable about losing yourself in circumstances and finding yourself in the the love of another.

    He didn't want to use the weapon, but feared he might anyhow. This was a justifiable assumption, for Caswell was a homicidal maniac.It was a gentle, misty spring day and the air held the smell of rain and blossoming-dogwood. Caswell gripped the revolver in his sweaty right hand and tried to think of a single valid reason why he should not kill a man named Magnessen, who, the other day, had commented on how well Caswell looked.What business was it of Magnessen's how he looked? Damned busybodies, always spoiling things for everybody....Caswell was a choleric little man with fierce red eyes, bulldog jowlsand ginger-red hair. He was the sort you would expect to find perchedon a detergent box, orating to a crowd of lunching businessmen andamused students, shouting, "Mars for the Martians, Venus for theVenusians!"But in truth, Caswell was uninterested in the deplorable social conditions of extraterrestrials. He was a jetbus conductor for the New York Rapid Transit Corporation. He minded his own business. And he was quite mad.Fortunately, he knew this at least part of the time, with at least half of his mind........

    Haunted by memories and grief, Jess packs what’s left and heads for the small mountain town of Pine Lake, where she takes a position as caregiver to an eccentric old woman.A rumored clairvoyant, Lucy is strange but welcoming and immediately intuits Jess as a “loose end” in need of closure. But Jess isn’t the only guest in Lucy’s large Victorian home. There’s also Star, a teenage runaway with a secret too painful to share. And the little boy with heart-shaped stones, who comes with a hope for reconciliation—and a warning.Soon Jess learns that she’s not the only lost soul running from the ghosts of the past. She and Star have been brought together for a reason: to be saved by the very thing that destroyed them.

    He regularly gives lifts to Valerie—beautiful, haunting, but terminally ill—from 13 Wish Road to her "positive thinking classes" at the community center. When he is no longer asked to drive her, he fears that she is dead, and questions Sal, one of the night operators. Her response turns Stephen’s world upside down. "But Stephen," she tells him, "there is no such address. Wish Road doesn’t have a number 13." As time passes, the world gets weirder. People appear (and disappear) who know far too much about Stephen and his past, and who lure him further and further into the twilight world of Thirteen. But if he asks any questions, he gets hurt. Ultimately, he decides, for the sake of both his safety and his sanity, he must walk away—but Thirteen has no intention of letting him go

    Released in the Mariel boatlift, he goes to find them in Miami, a city crayola and bright, like a child's drawing. So begins this magical brew of the absurd, the surreal, and the crazy logic of real life.

    But more than that, she is afraid of not being alone. Ever since her mother and Native American grandmother died together when she was a child, dancing cheek-to-cheek in a saloon in the middle of a violent storm, Sadie hasn't let anyone get too close. Not even Carlos, a passionate Cuban who sees the rich soul that Sadie tries to hide from herself.Cynical and loveless, she becomes obsessed with learning more about her unacknowledged identity, torn apart by tragic family legends she can't quite believe. And although she tries to fight it, she half suspects that with Carlos's help, she could find the truth of the past, and it could set her free...."A fluid, fun read--a story of self-discovery told by a woman haunted by female forebears while struggling to learn love....A work of accomplished introspection."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

    Some say it's Death, Some say it's darkness, I say it's a game of light...Gutsy 17-year-old Albert "Shoe" Horn is an apprentice plumber and part-time boxer in England in 1922, but when his mother dies, he finds himself responsible for an abusive, alcoholic father and a younger brother with special needs.This marvelous novel follows the indomitable Shoe's day-to-day survival with poetic grit, cynical genius, respect, and deep affection as he navigates a world full of very real characters: the gentle giant McAvy, his slave-driving boss, the Irish louts that resurrect his temper, the tempting ladies who seek him out, his hilarious plumbing clients, and the formidable “Dropper,” who Shoe fears will take away the most true thing in his life, his brother.

    Marvellous Ways is a ninety-year-old woman who's lived alone in a remote creek for nearly all her life. Recently she's taken to spending her days sitting on the steps of her caravan with a pair of binoculars. She's waiting for something - she's not sure what, but she'll know it when she sees it. Freddy Drake is a young soldier left reeling by the war. He's agreed to fulfil a dying friend's last wish and hand-deliver a letter to the boy's father in Cornwall. But Freddy's journey doesn't go to plan, and sees him literally wash up in Marvellous' creek, broken in body and spirit. When Marvellous comes to his aid, an unlikely friendship grows between the two. Can Freddy give Marvellous what she needs to say goodbye to the world, and can she give him what he needs to go on?

    When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends.Nainoa's family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods - a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities; further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame; while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family's legacy.When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawaii - with tragic consequences - they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival.One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020. Named one of the Best Books of 2020 by the New York Times (#30), the Guardian, the Boston Globe, Oprah Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, BBC Culture, Good Housekeeping, LitHub, Spectrum Culture, Third Place Books, and Powell's Books.

    A college-bound honors student, she has aspirations to be a poet. But an unplanned pregnancy changes everything. Suddenly, she isn’t so sure her life will go the way she wants. Then, she starts receiving threatening notes and wonders who is trying to destroy her. As the due date approaches, secrets come to life and events spiral out of control. Is Sophie losing her mind? Or is she finding her soul?

    Now, unable to play, adrift in an alcoholic daze, and with only fragmented memories of his past, Braden wants desperately to escape the darkness of the last eleven years.When his ex-wife and son are killed in a car accident, Braden returns home, hoping to forge a relationship with his troubled seventeen-year-old daughter, Allie. But how can he hope to rescue her from the curse that seems to shadow his family?Ophelia “Phee” MacPhee, granddaughter of the eccentric old man who sold Braden his cello, believes the curse is real. She swore an oath to her dying grandfather that she would ensure Braden plays the cello as long as he lives. But he can’t play, and as the shadows deepen and Phee finds herself falling for Braden, she’ll do anything to save him. It will take a miracle of forgiveness and love to bring all three of them back to the healing power of music.

    Sherlock suspects an ancient malevolence at work and he fears for Astraia's safety. The signs point to a Chinese Dragon God Cult known as the Ya Zi, a warrior society originally formed two thousand years ago to assassinate enemies of the Emperor. Astraia is exultant to finally have a chance to use her own deduction skills, but Miss Barquist is fearful to meet the eye of Sherlock Holmes-for unknown to both Astraia and Sherlock, she is the daughter of Jack the Ripper, and unknown to them all, a dark and powerful evil is preparing to strike at the heart of London.A Prose Portion of "Dragon Ripper"Daintily, almost like a spirit, she glided beyond the frightening calligraphy to stand before the brick wall of Mr. Wu's building. Raising her lantern to the structure, she pointed her magnifying glass toward a section near the door. "What do you see here?" she asked, holding her glass implement to the wall as aid to my inspection.I followed her, not half so ethereal. I have always been a clodhopper of a girl. I stared through the lens at the wall."The brick has been gouged," I said, removing a glove to lightly run a finger along a furrow incised into the masonry."You see there are three grooves, in fact, each almost a foot in length, separated by approximately three inches at the left end of the gouge and closer to five inches distance from each other at the right end," she said. "Do you have any theories about what could have created them?""I have no idea," I said, moving my finger over the lowest furrow, carved perhaps a half-inch deep into the brick. "But I don't believe I saw them when I was here last week.""No, I don't expect you did," she said. "These gouges are fresh. You can see the brick dust from them on the ground, still unspoilt by the alleyway filth."I lowered my own lantern to examine the ground, and saw that she was right. "What type of instrument was used to make such delineations?" I asked. "A knife or sword?"

    So the kind and character of his works: very rare, exceptional, unique, maverick, exceedingly original fiction: rara avis that's a quantum leap away and departure... At least three or four in this collection already strike one as veritable classics." - GREGORIO C. BRILLANTES