Navigating the mysterious path from childhood to adulthood, Sarah encounters a naked, winged man, rivalrous ghosts, and gods disguised as beggars.

    He's similar - in name only - to the actor who used to play Hercules. He's the son of a postman who's been losing it for decades. He's got a girlfriend he's not so sure about, a demeaning job at BagelWorks, and a crappy car. Things are not going well for Steve. He just went home for his sister's wedding (to another postman) and hates his family more than ever. His Dad just gave him a gun, and he doesn't know who to shoot first. His girlfriend just dumped him (now he's sure), he just lost his demeaning job, and his car still stinks. What's a jobless, dreamless, girl-less twentynothing to do? Scam money off his deaf grandmother. Drink before noon with his equally pathetic friends. Keep the gun. And try to keep from Going Postal.

    From the author of "Face-Time" comes an engaging, hilarious, sexy romp of a book about a college professor's unorthodox take on the academic imperative to publish or perish.

    To his father, he is bizarre and embarrassing. To his psychiatrist, he is a case study in mental illness. To the counselors at the camp where he is spending his summer, Benjamin is a "freaky kid" who shuns his peers and is strangely--and perhaps dangerously--attached to his best friend, Elliot, a stuffed letter H.Through the letters of his sister, mother, father, camp counselors, and psychiatrist--and, most touchingly, through those Benjamin writes to Elliot--this audacious and utterly unsentimental novel gives us a moving and sometimes shocking intimacy with a child whose disorder may be a kind of fragile genius. H is an astute, sympathetic evocation of the state we persist in calling "madness.""A new and mind-boggling perspective on mental illness from the point of view of the sufferer and those who would love and care about him. . . . H is a very poignant, enthralling debut."--The Boston Globe "Shepard is a reverse archaeologist, designing a tiny contemporary lost world for readers to excavate. . . . Everything matters. . . Shepard gets everything right."--New York magazine

    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.

    Now, fighting a debilitating illness and haunted by her past, she finds herself incapable of emotional or sexual intimacy. As a way to break down the defenses she has built up in her safe Chicago life, she sets out on a cross-country bike tour. On this trip she meets Ndele, a beautiful, mysterious black man who challenges her to confront her ghosts and decide whether to put her past behind her and live or succumb to the terrible uncertainties that plague even her dreams.

    This is not to say, however, that it is by any means quiet on the Row, a place where bathtubs double as lawn furniture and adultery, bribery and larceny are commonplace. From the quirky to the certifiable, it seems that everyone has something to hide -- from their cus- tomers, spouses and even themselves. But when a violent storm strikes, causing fire, a heart attack and grand theft, it stirs up more than just the earth it hits. Suddenly, long-buried truths are flowing faster than the flooding rains, and when the dust and smoke finally clear, everything is righted at last. With a strong, rich and uproariously funny voice, Joe Coomer resurrects the magic of his previous novels, Beachcombing for a Shipwrecked God and The Loop, and turns the utterly ordinary into the stunningly extra-ordinary. With a splendid cast of characters and the cleverest canine in comedy, Apologizing to Dogs is a hilarious, heartwarming and wonderfully human tale, proving that no matter how old you get, there's always something worth holding on to, fighting for and loving with all your might.

    But there are some who think that Biggest Elvis has to go, and Biggest Elvis himself senses that something ominous is coming. Radio promos to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Elvis' death on August 16.

    In this terminally irreverent (Richmond News-Leader) novel, he finds himself taking on everyone from his editor and his girlfriend to the fundamentalists and vegetarians covered on his beat -- and along the way, learns some surprising (and hilarious) lessons about life, love, and the press.

    The first avocado pears are appearing at the greengrocer's, people are thinking about carpeting their lavatories and boxing in their banisters, and Ronnie Glover, housepainter, husband and father, is feeling the first vague stirrings of discontent with his life. Then, out of the blue, the fabulous, sophisticated (and married) Jacqueline bursts into his life and teaches him to tango. She seems to offer everything he ever dreamt of. But is it all too good to he true?

    These wry and sassy tales illustrate the vulnerable heartbeat beneath the brash style of the eighties. Behind their professional self-assurance, Elinor Lipman's characters question and fear, search and yearn for that most elusive of commodities--love.

    But she is not prepared for the upheaval caused by one young girl, Anansi, who arrives from a background Sheila can only guess at.

    As funny and entertaining as it is captivating and heartrending, A Gay and Melancholy Sound is a shattering depiction of modern disconnection and the tragic consequences of a life bereft of love.Joshua Bland has lived the kind of life many would define as extraordinary. Born in a small Iowa town to a controlling, delusional mother who had always wanted a daughter rather than a son, her anger at him colors his life. His father, a compassionate drinker incapable of dealing with Joshua's mother, walks out on his wife and son, leaving a vacuum in the family that is damagingly filled by his tutor-cum-stepfather Petrarch Pavan, scion of a wealthy New York family who has secrets of his own. Playing on Joshua's brilliance, Petrarch trains him to win a nationwide knowledge competition, but Joshua's disappointing results in the finals are met with anger and disbelief by both his mother and stepfather. If Petrarch was unsuccessful in teaching Joshua the information he needed to win the contest, he had more success in instilling Joshua with the cynicism, self-doubt, and self-hatred that fill his own soul.Enlisting in the army during World War II, he serves first as an infantryman, where his irreverent letters home turn him into a best-selling author. Then, as a paratrooper, he meets the physical challenges he thought were beyond his reach and helps free the concentration camps before being wounded as the Allied forces free Buchenwald. Back home after the war, he becomes a wildly successful producer — and all of this by the age of thirty-seven. But when his production company flounders amid critical and financial woes, the reality of who he is becomes perfectly, depressingly clear: he has had a lifetime of extraordinary experiences — and no emotional connection to any of it.

    She is to be a student at Temple School -- banished because her features too closely resemble those of her mother's married employer. The headmistress of this all-girl school, Sophia Westervelt, has a mysterious past and a passion for education. She instills achievement into her students, confident that one day they will have dinner with the King of Sweden, because they will win the Nobel Prize. Under Sophia's direction, Waverley grows as her own abilities and vision expand. But far away in Europe, nations clash, and even isolated Isadora Island feels the impact. Sophia struggles to keep Temple School going, though formidable forces combine against her. And in the midst of this turmoil, Waverley experiences love for the first time -- a love so fierce that, like her education, it will shape the rest of her life.

    While his mother runs with Hell's Angel's bikers, T-Bird falls beneath the men's fists and favors, finds solace and hope in the slightest of rewards, and seeks to survive. Soon, his ex-con father returns to town, and what follows is a raw, powerful, poetic story of one boy's passage into adulthood.