What's for Dinner?


James Schuyler - 1978
    In tones that are variously droll, deadpan, and lyrical, Schuyler tells a story that revolves around three small-town American households. The Delehanteys are an old-fashioned Catholic family whose twin teenage boys are getting completely out of hand, no matter that their father is hardly one to spare the rod. Childless Norris and Lottie Taylor have been happily married for years, even as Lottie has been slowly drinking herself to death. Mag, a recent widow, is on the prowl for love. Retreating to an institution to dry out, Lottie finds herself caught up in a curious comedy of group therapy manners. At the same time, however, she begins an ascent from the depths of despair--illuminated with the odd grace and humor that readers of Schuyler's masterful poetry know so well--to a new understanding, that will turn her into an improbable redeemer within an unlikely world.What's for Dinner? is among the most delightful and unusual works of American literature. Charming and dark, off-kilter but pedestrian, mercurial yet matter-of-fact, Schuyler's novel is an alluring invention that captures both the fragility and the tenacity of ordinary life.

Affliction


Russell Banks - 1989
    A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks' artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade's story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite.

How the Mistakes Were Made


Tyler Mcmahon - 2011
    The jailbait bass player in her brother Anthony’s band, she grew up traveling the country, playing her heart out in a tight network of show venues to crowds soaked in blood and sweat. The band became notorious, the stars of a shadow music industry. But when Laura was 18, it all fell apart. Anthony’s own fans destroyed him, something which Laura never forgot. Ten years later, Laura finds her true fame with the formation of The Mistakes, a gifted rock band that bursts out of ‘90s Seattle to god-like celebrity. When she discovered Nathan and Sean, the two flannel-clad misfits who, along with her, composed the band, she instantly understood that Sean’s synesthesia—a blending of the senses that allows him to “see” the music— infused his playing with an edge that would take them to the top. And it did. But it, along with his love for Laura, would also be their downfall. At the moment of their greatest fame, the volatile bonds between the three explode in a mushroom cloud of betrayal, deceit, and untimely endings. The world blames Laura for destroying its rock heroes. Hated by the fans she’s spent her life serving, she finally tells her side of the story, the “true” story, of the rise and fall of The Mistakes.

This Body: A Novel of Reincarnation


Laurel Doud - 1998
    This Body borrows the cast of Midsummer Night's Dream and brings them into the 1990s.

Lily


Cindy BonnerCindy Bonner - 1992
    One of the outlaws was Shot Beatty, the love of Lily's life. One of the vigilantes was her father.

The Complete Lockpick Pornography


Joey Comeau - 2012
    Lockpick Pornography, originally published in 2005, is a gender-queer adventure story that was not widely available until now. We All Got It Coming presents the experiences of a young couple dealing with the aftermath of an act of violence. From kidnapping the son of a "family values" politician to violent confrontation, these are characters who fight back.

Daddy's Little Girl


Brittani Williams - 2007
    Her new man, James, plans to become king of the inner city, but his ambitions will turn everything upside down... Giselle is a sexy, high-maintenance siren. When she marries Shawn, he makes her feel like a queen...at first. But soon she stands to lose everything, including her husband.

Fatherhood: The Truth


Marcus Berkmann - 2005
    But if you look closely most of them are about motherhood. Fathers get brief paragraphs about needing the odd cuddle themselves and being helpful for carrying the heavier elements of baby kit, but that's it. Fatherhood - The Truth, on the other hand, is a shed-friendly man's guide to the whole scary, life-changing business. One that looks beyond the happy-clappy cliches into the fiery hell of night feeds and projectile vomiting. 'Shit happens' will suddenly start to make sense as a phrase. Providing crucial information and insight on every aspect of parenting with pitch-perfect humour, it takes the dad-to-be on a white-knuckle ride from conception to the first birthday that also considers the emotional truths and selfish imperatives that fathers are usually asked to bury out of sight. A personally informed journey, Fatherhood - The Truth also touches all the crucial practical bases to make it a one-stop, know-it-all manual for the father-to-be.

You Made Me Love You


Joanna Goodman - 2005
    "Make it in Hollywood" was always Estelle's mantra. She's made it to Hollywood, but she's far from becoming a celebrated fi lm editor. Her sister Erica is in New York, where she's writing fiction, but not feeling quite at home in the literary salon. Meanwhile back in Toronto, Jessie's perfect life, set in stone at the age of twenty-one when she married a doctor and then had two children, has begun to crumble. Even their mother is having doubts about the life she chose, wondering if maybe she should never have put marriage ahead of her blossoming career in show biz...

Us


Michael Kimball - 2011
    The husband calls an ambulance and his wife is rushed to a hospital where she lies in a coma. By day, the husband sits beside his wife and tries to think of ways to wake her up. At night, the husband sleeps in the chair next to his wife’s bedside dreaming that she will wake up. He wants to be able to take her back home. Years later, the story of this long and loving marriage is retold by their grandson. He wants to understand his grandmother's life and death, what it meant to his grandfather, and what it means to him. He wants to understand – in his own words – "how love can accumulate between two people."

The Singer


Cathi Unsworth - 2007
    Together they formed Blood Simple, and for a while they made a lot of noise, a bit of money and caused a sensation wherever they went. Then Vincent eloped with Sylvana, singer for the ethereal Mood Violet, and it all went wrong. Six months later Sylvana committed suicide, the band fell apart, and Vincent disappeared. That was 1981 and twenty years on, journalist Eddie Bracknell hopes the story of Blood Simple will be the making of him. He?s got a book contract and the right contacts, it?s just that he can?t get the different stories he?s heard to fit together, never mind trying to work out what happened to Vincent. A compelling crime novel and a very modern fable, The Singer brings the intoxicating days of punk back onstage, with all its noisy creativity and explosive violence.

Long White Con


Iceberg Slim - 1988
    There, he hooks up with the Vicksburg Kid, who completes his con education. Together they form a formidable duo, playing for the highest stakes in the Unhappy Virgin Game.

Rosamunde Pilcher: A Third Collection of Three Complete Novels. The Empty House / The Day of the Storm / Under Gemini


Rosamunde Pilcher - 1999
    The Empty House is about being in love with the wrong man; The Day of the Storm is about discovering family—and its secrets; and Under Gemini is about deception. A wonderful new omnibus edition of three full-length novels by one of America's favorites.

Evil?


Timothy Carter - 2009
    10 And, yea verily, Stuart did commit the Sin of Onan in the shower. And this was witnessed by his own brother who did cry out unto their mother. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. 11 And the townspeople rose up against him and all Onaners, calling upon one another to tear the youthful sinners limb from unclean limb. And there was much pants wetting. 12 And lo, Stuart did join forces with the demon, Fon Pyre, and together they did set forth to discover the cause of the town's trouble. 13 And, hark! A pair of fallen angels would plant seeds of hatred unto the townspeople. And on the seventh day, Stuart did vow to rip the fallen angels a new one and layeth upon them an epic smacketh-down.

Cross Dog Blues: Book One of A Great Long Story to Tell


Richard M. Brock - 2015
    Fiction and Hist. Thrillers★★★★★ 4.7-Star Average Reader Review“...this is storytelling at its best...” -- Fortean Times Magazine“...poignant...heartening...insightful...” -- Kirkus ReviewsWith the rambling pioneers of blues music leading an unforgettable cast of characters, this raw, rousing and adventurous debut novel delivers a breathtaking view of life, livin’, love and hate in America in the 20th century, and the mysterious beginnings of the music that provided the soundtrack for it all...THE BLUES.In 1915, in a moonlit room in a boarding house in Texas, Charlie Patton -- the enigmatic inventor of blues music -- founds a shadowy alliance with Huddie ‘Lead Belly’ Ledbetter and Blind Lemon Jefferson. A pact is made, and the seeds of revolution are sown. Back at the Dockery Plantation in the Mississippi Delta, with the help of the likes of Son House, Howlin‘ Wolf, Robert Johnson, and others, Charlie’s plan spreads across the South, and then across the country. But these bluesmen have no way of knowing where this dangerous road will lead. Nor do they know the Ku Klux Klan is watching.In 2002, Franklyn O’Connor -- an adventurous and penniless youth -- sits at a lonely bar in the train station of his small upstate New York hometown holding a one-way ticket to the Crossroads in the Mississippi Delta. There he hopes to track down his deadbeat father, who walked out on his family when Frank was five. With nothing but his rucksack and the unsolicited assistance of a little old man called Furry Jenkins, Frank soon unwittingly drifts into the middle of a combustible racial feud at the intersection of a still divided society. A shocking truth waiting down the line.An adventurous and powerful novel about how, and more importantly why, from the cotton fields of Mississippi, blues music changed the world, and how the world changed one young man.