And so the announcement that Violet Dene Gordon and her husband, Charles, are on their way back from British Burma to settle in the long-dormant estate sends a ripple of excitement through the sleepy village. For Violet, Dene’s Court stands as a monument to her childhood, but lingering doubts remain about whether she and Charles will be happy there. Adding complexity to the arrangement is the arrival of Violet’s American niece, a college student named Sally who has been sent by her mother in an effort to put an ocean between the impetuous young woman and the object of her affection, an actor. Anxiety, tempers, and long-buried emotions flare as the estate’s new residents search for a sense of belonging and peace between its hallowed and serene walls.

    F. Powers's beautifully realized final work, is a comic foray into the commercialized wilderness of modern American life. Its hero, Joe Hackett, is a high school track star who sets out to be a saint. But seminary life and priestly apprenticeship soon damp his ardor, and by the time he has been given a parish of his own he has traded in his hair shirt for the consolations of baseball and beer. Meanwhile Joe's higher-ups are pressing for an increase in profits from the collection plate, suburban Inglenook's biggest business wants to launch its new line of missiles with a blessing, and not all that far away, in Vietnam, a war is going on. Joe wants to duck and cover, but in the end, almost in spite of himself, he is condemned to do something right.J. F. Powers was a virtuoso of the American language with a perfect ear for the telling cliché and an unfailing eye for the kitsch that clutters up our lives. This funny and very moving novel about the making and remaking of a priest is one of his finest achievements.

    Everyone else is annihilated. When a medic finally rescues Paco almost two days later, he is waiting to die, flies and maggots covering his burnt, shattered body. He winds up back in the US with his legs full of pins, daily rations of Librium and Valium, and no sense of what to do next. One evening, on the tail of a rainstorm, he limps off the bus and into the small town of Boone, determined to find a real job and a real bed—but no matter how hard he works, nothing muffles the anguish in his mind and body. Brilliantly and vividly written, Paco's Story—winner of a National Book Award—plunges you into the violence and casual cruelty of the Vietnam War, and the ghostly aftermath that often dealt the harshest blows.

    With all the patterns of her life suddenly rendered meaningless, she turns to childhood friends for support, gets a job, and becomes involved with two very different men. But just as her future begins to emerge, her past throws up a daunting challenge. A moving story of self-reinvention, Final Payments is a timeless exploration of the nature of friendship, desire, guilt, and love.

    What would you do if you were driving on the highway with your two daughters, and those in the vehicle next to you started shooting at your car? And you noticed one of your daughters had been hit? Interstate is a multifaceted vision of American violence, and an ode to the truth that the greatest love one has is for his or her child.

    Trenchmouth, nicknamed for his inexplicable, lifelong oral affliction, is orphaned and then raised by the Widow Dorsett, a strong mountain woman who teaches him to fend for himself. Trouble seems to follow Trenchmouth as he goes through his life with stints as a mine war sniper, musician, and prize-winning reporter. But Trenchmouth always finds a way to triumph, and when he enters his last stage of life, he is indeed a reporter worthy of a grand report, of telling his unthinkable tale. Yet it is in the telling itself that something truly remarkable is revealed, something even Trenchmouth could not have known.

    A close-knit group of friends draws closer, and then apart, when scandal and tragedy erupt among them.

    Paul, Minnesota, 1939. The body of a beautiful dime-a-dance girl is found on a hillside, and Police Lieutenant Wesley Horner, struggling and alone after his wife's recent death, heads the investigation into her murder. His chief suspect is Herbert White, an eccentric recluse and hobby photographer who spends his days recording his life in detailed journal entries and scrapbooks. In Mr. White's Confession, Robert Clark illuminates the complex relationships between truth and fiction, past and present, faith and memory.

    All of the characters have a common desire to imagine and invent rather horrifying stories about the lives of people around them. As the novel develops, certain phrasings and images recur improbably, drawing the reader into a subtle linguistic game that calls into question the nature of authorship, the ways we inhabit and invade each other's lives, and the shape of fiction itself.

    But they haven't reckoned on nosy Northern California-style neighbors, torrential rain, demands of the flesh, and Felix's improbable new love, a wayward sculptress on whose behalf he undertakes a one-man vendetta against a drug-busting state trooper named Jerpbak. As their deal escalates through crises into nightmare, their dreams of easy money get nipped in the bud.

    As the festivities unfold (and the cash bar opens), everyone has an opinion and a lively prediction about April and Caleb's union, each the reflection of a different marital experience.Meanwhile, at the nearby Hideaway Lodge, a domestic quarrel ends in tragedy. As April and Caleb's life together begins, death parts another man and woman in angry violence—and as the two stories gradually intersect, their juxtaposition explores the tangled roots of vulnerability and desire.By the time the last polka has been danced and the bouquet tossed, Midnight Champagne has cast an extraordinary spell. From the novel's opening epigraph from Chekhov—"If you fear loneliness, then marriage is not for you"—to its final moments in the honeymoon suite, A. Manette Ansay weaves tenderness and fury, passion and wonder into a startling tapestry of love in all its paradox and power.

    It begins with Senate confirmation hearings for a liberal Secretary of State and concludes two weeks later, after debate and controversy have exploded this issue into a major crisis."I can recall no other novel in which there is so well presented a president's dilemma when his awful responsibility for the nation's interest conflicts with a personal code of good morals." (The New York Times)

    Yet only Stone's Dog Soldiers is still remembered today. That oversight is startling when considering the literary impact of The Hair of Harold Roux. A dazzlingly crafted novel-within-a-novel hailed as a masterpiece, it deserves a new generation of readers. In The Hair of Harold Roux, we are introduced to Aaron Benham: college professor, writer, husband, and father. Aaron-when he can focus-is at work on a novel, The Hair of Harold Roux, a thinly disguised autobiographical account of his college days. In Aaron's novel, his alter ego, Allard Benson, courts a young woman, despite the efforts of his rival, the earnest and balding Harold Roux-a GI recently returned from World War II with an unfortunate hairpiece. What unfolds through Aaron's mind, his past and present, and his nested narratives is a fascinating exploration of sex and friendship, responsibility and regret, youth and middle age, and the essential fictions that see us through.

    

    The Forge follows the story of Miltiades Vaiden, a Civil War veteran who has returned to his southern home in the hopes of rebuilding and eventually rising into the ranks of the middle class.