"Lost Geography" takes the complexity of migration as its central subject: Why do landscape, work, and family lock some people in place and release others? In settings both rural and urban, these stalwart, tragically dispersed yet resilient people respond not only to new environments and experiences but to the eruption of sudden loss and change.As the settings and characters shift in this wise, resonant book, readers are invited to see how habits of survival translate from one generation to another. How are we like our forebears? How does circumstance make us alter what our heritage has told us is important? With unfailing subtlety and elegance, "Lost Geography" teaches us, in a luminous sequence of intense personal dramas, that what keeps us alive isn't so much our ability to understand the details of our past as having the luck and courage to survive the assaults of both the present and history.

    With its showcase homes, elegant lawns, and other trappings of wealth, Linden Hills is not unlike other affluent black communities. But residence in this community is indisputable evidence of "making it." Although no one knows what the precise qualifications are, everyone knows that only certain people get to live there—and that they want to be among them.Once people get to Linden Hills, the quest continues, more subtle, but equally fierce: the goal is a house on Tupelo Drive, the epitome of achievement and visible success. No one notices that the property on Tupelo Drive goes back on sale quickly; no one questions why there are always vacancies at Linden Hills.In a resonant novel that takes as its model Dante's Inferno, Gloria Naylor reveals the truth about the American dream—that the price of success may very well be a journey down to the lowest circle of hell.

    As avant-garde novelist Antony Lamont struggles to write a "new wave murder mystery," his frustrating emotional and sexual life wreaks havoc on his work-in-progress. As a result, his narrative (the very book we are reading) turns into a literary "stew": an uproariously funny melange of journal entries, erotic poetry, parodies of all kinds, love letters, interviews, and lists - as Hugh Kenner in Harper's wrote, "for another such virtuoso of the List you'd have to resurrect Joyce." Soon Lamont's characters (on loan from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flann O'Brien, James Joyce, and Dashiell Hammett) take on lives of their own, completely sabotaging his narrative.

    During the next few years he sees, and commits, more than his share of Civil War atrocities. Most of the action takes place in Kansas and Missouri between the rebel Irregulars (bushwhackers) and the Union Jayhawkers, with some civilians caught in the crossfire. The studiedly cool Jake experiences loss (the deaths of his best friend, father and comrades) and love (the best friend's "widow"); he also learns about tolerance from his contact with a nobly reserved black Irregular. There's plenty of hard riding, drinking and shooting, most of it leading to bloodshed. Jake's loyalty to the "secesh" cause is unquestioning and doesn't quite gibe with his growing unease amid the gore, or with his departure in the midst of the war for Texas with wife and child. The prose is occasionally rather pretentious, but this is a generally enjoyable coming-of-age novel by the author of Under the Bright Lights. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc

    He has just taken a prestigious university position in Los Angeles and has been appointed to oversee the collection of papers and works of a leading light of the gay literary salon known as the Purple Circle. Ross stumbles across a lost work by an unknown author and his quest to identify the mystery writer and achieve the glory of scholastic tenure unveils increasingly bizarre and unbalanced facts about a group of writers who in the 1970s and 1980s broke new ground in the creation of a gay literary sensibility. But the dark truth contained within The Book of Lies is even more startling. With biting wit and a lush sense of place and character, Felice Picano's daring novel is at once a stylish mystery, a comical roman A clef, and a wicked send-up of the new Ivory Tower. Leave it to Felice Picano to add a walloping dose of melodrama and intrigue to a tale already redrawing genre boundaries...What Picano does is take an academic mystery (subject matter that might have proved tedious or solipsistic in lesser hands) and morphs it into something new--a page-turning, often campy, occasionally serious critique of academia and historical truth, literary celebrity, and the imminent future of America.-Philadelphia Tribune Felice Picano is the author of 19 books including the best-selling novels Like People In History, Looking Glass Lives, The Lure and Eyes as well as the literary memoirs Ambidextrous, Men Who Loved Me, and A House On the Ocean, A House On the Bay. He is also the author with Dr. Charles Silverstein of The New Joy of Gay Sex. A native of New York, Felice Picano now lives in Los Angeles.

    The protagonist of Apex Hides the Hurt is a nomenclature consultant. If you want just the right name for your new product, whether it be automobile or antidepressant, sneaker or spoon, he’s the man to get the job done. Wardrobe lack pizzazz? Come to the Outfit Outlet. Always the wallflower at social gatherings? Try Loquacia. And of course, whenever you take a fall, reach for Apex, because Apex Hides the Hurt. Apex is his crowning achievement, the multicultural bandage that has revolutionized the adhesive bandage industry. “Flesh-colored” be damned—no matter what your skin tone is—Apex will match it, or your money back.After leaving his job (following a mysterious misfortune), his expertise is called upon by the town of Winthrop. Once there, he meets the town council, who will try to sway his opinion over the coming days. Lucky Aberdeen, the millionaire software pioneer and hometown-boy-made-good, wants the name changed to something that will reflect the town’s capitalist aspirations, attracting new businesses and revitalizing the community. Who could argue with that? Albie Winthrop, beloved son of the town’s aristocracy, thinks Winthrop is a perfectly good name, and can’t imagine what the fuss is about. Regina Goode, the mayor, is a descendent of the black settlers who founded the town, and has her own secret agenda for what the name should be. Our expert must decide the outcome, with all its implications for the town’s future. Which name will he choose? Or perhaps he will devise his own? And what’s with his limp, anyway?Apex Hides the Hurt brilliantly and wryly satirizes our contemporary culture, where memory and history are subsumed by the tides of marketing.

    Eugene Raxford is not what anyone would call a debonair man of action. He has no class, no skills, and all the physical prowess of a napping tree sloth. James Bond would think twice before letting him park the Aston Martin. Though he is a devoted pacifist, Raxford is also—thanks to a tragically consequential typo—the supposed leader of a half-baked and violent radical organization. That’s why the FBI wants him to go undercover and spy on the consortium of real-life terrorists and deadly assassins. Now, with the help of his girlfriend—who is even more clueless than he—Raxford is about to enter a realm of danger and deception unlike any he has ever imagined. And the safety of the entire world depends on his every move.

    He has come to love the quiet routine of his job as a care assistant at a nursing home, where he has forged a close relationship with its most ill-tempered resident, Dr Paulsen. But when Oscar is lured into the chapel at King’s College by the ethereal sound of an organ, he meets and falls in love with Iris Bellwether, a beautiful and enigmatic medical student. He follows her into a world of scholarship, wealth, and privilege, and soon becomes embroiled in the machinations of her older brother, Eden. A charismatic but troubled musical prodigy, Eden persuades his sister and their close-knit circle of friends into a series of disturbing experiments. He believes that music — with his unique talent to guide it — has the power to cure, and will stop at nothing to prove himself right. As the line between genius and madness blurs, Oscar fears the danger that could await them all.

    But neither can he ignore any longer his psychedelically bizarre childhood. From infancy, for instance, he was called Freedom (in fact his given name) not only by those who should have known him but also by members of the burgeoning movement led by his father, who happily exploited having his wife and his toddling, then walking and talking, and finally observant son in tow. Thanks to Fred, this charismatic, brilliant, volatile ringmaster is as captivating in these pages as he was to his devoted disciples back then. We watch Lenny organize hippies and intellectuals, stage magnificent stunts, and gradually lose his magnetic confidence and leading role as the sixties start slipping away. He demands loyalty but gives none back in return, a man who preaches love but treats his family with almost reflexive cruelty. And Fred remembers all of it--the chaos, the spite, the affection. A kaleidoscopic saga, this novel is at once a profound allegory for America--where we've been and where we're going--and a deeply intimate portrait of a father and son who define our times.

    Finding each other's voice attractive, they soon switch to a private, "one-to-one" connection. Their seduction-through-conversation begins hesitantly and then becomes erotic.

    Soon, through the family’s generosity, he is a student at a private boarding school and an aide to the great New York senator Henry Bonwiller, who is running for president of the United States. Before long, Corey finds himself involved with one of the Metarey daughters as well, and he begins to leave behind the world of his upbringing. As the Bonwiller campaign gains momentum, Corey finds himself caught up in a complex web of events in which loyalty, politics, sex, and gratitude conflict with morality, love, and the truth. America America is a beautiful novel about America as it was and is, a remarkable exploration of how vanity, greatness, and tragedy combine to change history and fate.

    What if he hadn't been adopted by Jews, what if his brother, Jonathan, had been adopted by a different couple? He and Jonathan fantasize about being the secret sons of Sandy Koufax, of coming to earth in a spaceship. They make blood pacts and switch names. But while they imagine other identities, they search for ways to feel that they belong to each other, to their parents, to their home. As adolescents, even in the familiar and happy comfort of the Manhattan apartment where they live, their dreams of girls and rock stars are colored by these concerns. Now Ben Suskind is thirty years old, living in San Francisco with his girlfriend, Jenny, and her daughter. He still reflects on the questions of his youth; Jenny often has to pull his head out of the clouds. So when he receives a letter from a woman claiming to be his birth mother, he is unprepared, panicked, but curious. He tells his adoptive parents about the letter, and they fly him home to New York and reveal a secret about his past, one that turns Ben's whole world upside down. Without telling anyone, Ben embarks on a journey, risking his relationship with everyone - his girlfriend, his brother, his parents. He combs through the records of his family's past, trying to find the facts about who he and Jonathan really are, and in the process learns the price of the lies people tell in the name of truth and good intentions.

    Elizabeth is a pickpocket and thief living on the edge in New York City, torn between loyalty to her foster sister and a new boy who's recruited into their thieving ranks.

    Randall Jarrell’s classic novel was originally published to overwhelming critical acclaim in 1954, forging a new standard for campus satire—and instantly yielding comparisons to Dorothy Parker’s razor-sharp barbs. Like his fictional nemesis, Jarrell cuts through the earnest conversations at Benton College—mischievously, but with mischief nowhere more wicked than when crusading against the vitriolic heroine herself.

    "The Red Bow,"about a town consumed by pet-killing hysteria, won a 2004 National Magazine Award and "Bohemians," the story of two supposed Eastern European widows trying to fit in in suburban USA, is included in The Best American Short Stories 2005. His new book includes both unpublished work, and stories that first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and Esquire. The stories in this volume work together as a whole whose impact far exceeds the simple sum of its parts. Fans of Saunders know and love him for his sharp and hilarious satirical eye. But In Persuasion Nation also includes more personal and poignant pieces that reveal a new kind of emotional conviction in Saunders's writing.Saunders's work in the last six years has come to be recognized as one of the strongest-and most consoling-cries in the wilderness of the millennium's political and cultural malaise. In Persuasion Nation's sophistication and populism should establish Saunders once and for all as this generation's literary voice of wisdom and humor in a time when we need it most.