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.

    Peter Werner Ernst is an internal medicine resident at a major hospital's intensive care unit. He functions on eight hours of sleep for every three shifts at work. Overseeing the care of eight patients, Dr. Ernst's job is to keep death at bay--at least until the day shift comes on, and any potential death goes on someone else's record.When Felicia Potter enters the ward to visit her comatose father, Dr. Ernst sees the opportunity to spice up his grim routine with a little romance. What he cannot see is how his relationship with the young attractive model will call into question his integrity, his dedication to his career, and just how far he will go for the sake of his lust.

    Some remembered her as the innocent daughter of a local minister, while others whispered rumors about a recent lascivious turn. Was she really the 'other woman' who came between her friends' engagement? Is it true she convinced someone to give up a life of crime? Did she really spend time in jail for a DUI? After failing to maintain a blogging career, Jessica Carter must return to her home town of Hampton, New Hampshire. The place is nice enough: a beautiful summer destination with sandy beaches, a touristy boardwalk and a cozy, small-town atmosphere. But Jessica knows coming home means owning up to her mistakes and mending relationships with everyone she left behind. Corinne's death brings Jessica closer to her former friends, but as she digs into Corinne's life, she exposes dark secrets her friends wish would remain hidden. Caught between her investigation and her friends, Jessica seeks to answer the one question everyone else seems content to leave unresolved: who knew the real Corinne, and why would someone want her dead?

    Blind since childhood and put into a state home, Ludlow first learns the piano and later takes up the horn. When at fifteen he is released to the custody of a bandleader, his unmistakable talent takes him on an odyssey from Boone's Cafe, a small dive in New Marsails, to New York where he becomes a leading, visionary jazz musician. This is the coming of age story of a man set apart - by blindness, by race, by artistry - who must learn through adversity not only who he is and whom to trust, but also from where he derives his self worth. The Dark Tower Series brings this neglected classic back into print after an absence of many years. Considered by Stanley Crouch to be one of the finest novels ever written about jazz - an exploration of the African-American experience that evokes comparisons to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man - A Drop of Patience is an exquisite and forceful parable of moral and spiritual blindness and a staggering work of art.

    T. Bunker. Now eighty-three-years-old and dying, Bunker wants to tell his side of the story, the story of his affair with Estela, Andrés's mother. As a child Andrés knew Bunker as the "Captain of the Sleepers"--so called because he transported back to Vieques those who had died on the mainland but wished to be buried at home. But what really happened between Bunker and Estela, and between Estela and her one true love, a leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Movement? What did Andrés witness, and what were the real circumstances of his mother's mysterious death?Beautifully translated by Edith Grossman, Captain of the Sleepers is a startling tale of remembrance and reality, and Mayra Montero's finest book yet.

    Nelson and Angela Armstrong are wealthy, successful, determined, and stubborn. The freshness of their love has gradually turned to the staleness of noncommunicating separateness. And Angela wants the separateness to be permanent. Nelson acquiesces, for he knows no way to recapture the glow which Angela seems so determined to snuff out entirely. But there is someone else who is concerned - one who died in 1848, yet his presence is uncannily real. And because of his own mistakes, he is determined to teach the Armstrongs what he learned about life, love, and survival.

    First US publication for the Scottish Spence.Neil McGraw is a lad in Glasgow, an only child, the son of a dour undertaker permanently embittered by his wife's death during childbirth. Whenever the boy misbehaves, he's locked in the basement among the coffins, so it's not surprising he asks every body: What happens when you die? Against his will, he finds himself learning the trade. This is less gloomy than it sounds. The story moves at a good clip as the resilient Neil experiments with drinking and dating.The crisis comes when his dad finds him and his girl making out in a coffin. Soon, it's Neil's turn to lock his old man, dead drunk, into the basement, before hightailing it to the London of the Swinging '60s. A friendly queer, Abe Morris, offers him a crash pad, no strings attached, where Neil finds drugs, straight sex, and Zen. The party ends when Abe, stoned, is killed in traffic and Spence abandons conventional narrative to send Neil hopscotching around the world before depositing him, 15 years later, beside the funeral pyres of the Ganges. Here, he gets very sick but is rescued by a vision in a sari: Lila, a Londoner, back home for her father's funeral. The two fall in love and marry, lickety-split, before Neil is summoned back to Glasgow. His father has died, leaving him the business, which Neil gives a hippie twist, producing brightly painted coffins in unusual shapes, with Lila a business partner.The mood is light and buoyant, but novelistic concerns (what makes Lila tick? why do the couple decide not to have kids?) are shelved in favor of a scrapbook of original last rites, seasoned with Eastern mysticism. There's an appealing freshness to Spence's writing; too bad he gives up on credible plotting and characterization.

    There have been hardcovers and paperbacks, an issue with two spines, an issue with a magnetic binding, an issue that looked like a bundle of junk mail, and an issue that looked like a sweaty human head. McSweeney’s has won multiple literary awards, including two National Magazine Awards for fiction, and has had numerous stories appear in The Best American Magazine Writing, the O. Henry Awards anthologies, and The Best American Short Stories. Design awards given to the quarterly include the AIGA 50 Books Award, the AIGA 365 Illustration Award, and the Print Design Regional Award.

     Leutnant Hausser, a young experienced infantry officer with the 76th Infantry Division is assigned with a handful of men to the south of Stalingrad. As the fighting heightens in the city, the officer and his men are sent to bolster the defences of their allies, the Romanians. The front is relatively quiet, most believe the Russian Army is finished. The end of the bitter war in the east may only be days away. Thinking of loved ones and home, they await the conclusion of the battle, comforted by promises that the victorious outcome will decide the war…that it will soon be all over. It may only be a matter of time before they see their families again. Daily life has become more relaxed, in warm bunkers and well dug defences, they write letters and socialise with their allies. It may soon be time to go home. As the German Sixth Army discovers just how vicious the fighting in Stalingrad can become, they take troops from their flanks in final attempts to take the city before the onset of 'another bitter Russian winter.' One last push will finish the Russians once and for all. The German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, has virtually driven the Red Air Force from the skies. The Russian high command, STAVKA, are secretly planning to turn the tide of the war in the southern sector of the front as they see the weaker German allies occupy defensive positions either side of the city that holds Stalin's name. As the Russian offensive engulfs the flanks around Stalingrad, the young officer and his men desperately begin a battle for survival against bitter temperatures and time, oblivious to what the overall picture may be…and what their future holds. Not everything is as it seems in the deepest cold of winter as a small group of men combat nature and a vicious and cunning enemy motivated by revenge to survive and escape. With temperatures dropping to minus 25 to 35 degrees Celsius and a vicious struggle for survival against both nature and the cruelties of war, the portrayal of individual human reaction to fate and historical events is a gripping insight into the soldier on the frontline, thousands of miles from the decisions that will forge their individual destinies. Having spent thirty years studying World War 2 and in particular, the Russian Front, these offerings are based on historical fact. The characters are fictitious, attempting to portray a realistic account of what the battle would have been like for individual soldiers. All units and actions are in accordance with actual events, including propaganda, deployment and individual division engagements. Bloody Iced Bullet is available as an E-Book on Kindle, paperback in US book stores and via mail order across the world. The author aims to provide a thoroughly enjoyable and imaginative reading experience at an affordable price for the reader. All three works from the author's World War 2 Series concentrating on Stalingrad have achieved Best Seller status on Amazon in the UK and many more stories are outlined. Imagination is personal, free and to be cherished.

    a lovely blend of humour, sexual comedy and pathos' Daily Express 'A rollicking tale of a Welsh sailor with a girl in every port, but only one true love at home...Thomas has a rare gift for words...This is his best book and a celebration of his robust talents, which combine flesh with imagination. He always had a narrative verve, and this saga develops it into a turn of the wheel of life. Revolving Jones comes back at last to his eternal miss, and hopefully, Leslie Thomas will achieve a revolution in his reputation' The Times 'This exciting adventure story is also one man's pilgrimage, a lifetime's odyssey, a ritually layered tale of the quest for humour and love' Daily Mail 'He inhabits that "bestseller author" territory that includes the likes of Jeffrey Archer, Jack Higgins and Ken Follett, but he is a far better writer than any of them' Marcel Berlins, Sunday Times

    Now that its basketball program has fallen apart, CSU’s only claim to fame is its Gravinics Department, dedicated to the study of an obscure European country—its mythology, its extraordinarily difficult language, and especially its bizarre star poet, Henderson.Having discovered Henderson’s poetry in a trash bin, Stanley Higgs becomes the foremost scholar of the poet’s work, accepts a position at Chandler State University, achieves international academic fame, marries the Dean’s daughter, and abruptly stops talking. With all of academia convinced that Higgs is formulating a great truth, the university employs Orwellian techniques to record Higgs’s every potential utterance and to save its reputation. A feckless Gravinics language student, Samuel Grapearbor, together with his long-suffering girlfriend Julia, is hired to monitor Higgs during the day. Over endless games of checkers and shared sandwiches, a uniquely silent friendship develops. As one man struggles to grow up and the other grows old, The Grasshopper King, in all of his glory, emerges.In this debut novel about treachery, death, academia, marriage, mythology, history, and truly horrible poetry, Jordan Ellenberg creates a world complete with its own geography, obscene folklore, and absurdly endearing -characters—a world where arcane subjects flourish and the smallest swerve from convention can result in -immortality.Jordan Ellenberg was born in Potomac, Maryland in 1971. His brilliance as a mathematical prodigy led to a feature in The National Enquirer, an interview with Charlie Rose on CBS’s Nightwatch, and gold medals at the Math Olympiad in Cuba and Germany. He is now an Assistant Professor of Math at Princeton University and his column, "Do the Math," appears regularly in the online journal Slate. This is his first novel.

    

    She was smart, attractive and well educated. After losing the love of her life she decided she had to get away from it all. Ravenna did what everyone would love to do…, she left and never looked back. She made a comfortable life on a small Greek island paradise nestled in the southern blue Aegean sea. It was filled with friendly people, beautiful beaches and warm sunny days. The strong willed woman thought she had left her life behind her… but she was wrong. Now, torn between memories and guilt, she must decide- but will she get…a second chance?

    Costello's spellbinding novel, The Rag Tree, breathes dark, vivid life into Ireland's passionate legends. Crisp and sharp-witted, Costello's tale probes a modern Ireland torn between letting go of time-honored dreams and embracing the promises of a prosperous New Ireland. Even as they struggle against one another, the Irish Special Branch, the British Army, Scotland Yard, and the I.R.A. find themselves forced to ally against a common foe: The Rag Man. Mattie Joe Treacy is the Rag Man. Engrossed in a desperate quest to find his missing father, Mattie Joe is cursed-by the playboy's life of drink and carousing, by his family's staunch adherence to Ireland's old folk ways, and by a family curse hurled at his clan generations ago. The Curse of the O'Neills, invoked by an angry cleric against Mattie Joe's great-grandfather, declares that, "the eldest son will not survive the father." No Treacy son has since outlived his father, and Mattie Joe is next in line to die. Or is he?

    It had cracked 100 the day before, and the old weatherman on channel four, the guy who Joyce had said was the most accurate but heard was a pervert, had said today would be hotter by a few degrees."The summer heat in Tucson makes some people dry up and some people boil over. In the dusty, gated desert community of Rancho Sin Vacas (Ranch Without Cattle), a handful of residents are finding that neighborhood life is becoming increasingly bizarre among the crumbling swimming pools, overwatered lawns, and disaffected children.Sixteen-year-old Kendra obsessively hones her body into a perfectly muscled machine, even as she struggles to master a mounting violent streak. Thomas, her increasingly misanthropic brother, rarely leaves the house, all the while cultivating a disturbing little obsession of his own under the front porch. Down the street, Merv is stuck in a rut, thirty years old and still living at home. Lonely and looking for a way out, he's reaching his breaking point over his insomniac mother, whose oddly compulsive behavior with household appliances threatens to wreak havoc on his life.When a strung-out, magic marker sniffing teenager disappears from the neighborhood and rumors of murder surface, these malcontents find themselves in an unlikely alliance that will alter the course of one long, sun-baked summerand perhaps their lives.Funny and disturbing, Modern Ranch Living probes the emptiness of modern American culture, the strange things people do to satisfy their twin hungers for pleasure and oblivion, and the unexpected small acts of kindness they can sometimes perform to ease one another's pain. This delicately deadpan comedy makes brilliantly clear why Mark Jude Poirier was named "the young American writer to watch" by the Times Literary Supplement.