Did the Russians invent baseball? Is there a connection between Babe Ruth's cross-dressing and Gertrude Stein's secret mission to New York? What does history tell us about what lies beyond heaven?From the American heartland to Hiroshima, to Paris, to shopping malls and caves with prehistoric art, Ivan the Terrible Goes on a Family Picnic is a wild ride across generations and frontiers of the imagination.

When an ex-basketball star and poetry aficionado discovers lost love letters from Emily Dickinson to an unknown Irish lover, she must confront academic conformism and risk embarrassing exposure in order to defend larger truths about American culture in a nation still divided by war.Meet Holly Winegarten, a campus celebrity and painfully self-conscious young woman trying to come to terms with being six feet, nine inches tall. Sidelined by injury from a basketball career, she develop...

A portable collection of polemical bedtime stories for adults, addressing such timely topics as: erectile dysfunction during the national anthem, what happens when Nancy Pelosi comes calling, and what Model A Fords say under certain conditions.

Jerry Renfrow runs an innovative freelance business. He helps others to be nice—for a price. Jerry deals in dreams and affections. A ferocious comedy and love story, Nice offers a rollercoaster of a read, a straight-on look at human foibles, and a sharp portrait of contemporary America.

Rod Gass is accused of being a criminal. He’s failed at careers that people didn’t know existed. Now a custodian at the Van Allen School of Mortuary Science, he is enjoying himself immensely.His niece, Judy, wants to know why. She is the only one ready to unveil this man, and to challenge him on his own terms. Rich in humor and with an acute sense of the absurdities of everyday life, Apology for Big Rod is an American success story of an altogether different sort.

Dwellings of Enchantment: Writing and Reenchanting the Earth offers ecocritical and ecopoetic readings that focus on multispecies dwellings of enchantment and reenchant our rapport with the more-than-human world. It sheds light on the marvelous entanglements between humans and other life forms coexisting with us–entanglements that, when fully perceived, call onto humans to shift perspectives on both the causes and solutions to current ecological crises. Working against the disenchantment o...

In a time of global environmental crisis, pastoralism may seem beside the point. Yet pastoral ideals are still alive even though they often manifest themselves by ironic indirection. What can the pastoral tradition teach us about our ties to particular places?The contributors to this volume attempt to lay the groundwork for the ongoing concern with pastoral and with its critical revision.This volume brings together new essays that focus on painting, photography, poetry, essay...

George Saunders’ Pastoralia is an exaggerated dystopia of late capitalist America, merging the spirit of James Thurber with the world of the Simpsons. In his entry in Ig’s acclaimed Bookmarked series, award-winning author Charles Holdefer addresses how Saunders captures the pain and absurdity of the American service sector, and does justice to the dignity of the people who struggle there.Charles Holdefer has published four novels with the Permanent Press. ...

George Young is a devoted family man and a Gulf War veteran. After a hometown business venture flops, George accepts work overseas as a contracted civilian interrogator for the US government at Omega, a secret holding facility for suspected terrorists.The work pays well, but his personal life is crumbling. His wife, with whom he is forbidden to talk about his work, is becoming more and more enamored of gin and tonic. Worse, during a “routine” interrogation, a detainee dies in Georg...

Hanging over the porch of the tiny New England bookstore called Island Books is a faded sign with the motto “No Man Is an Island; Every Book Is a World.” A.J. Fikry, the irascible owner, is about to discover just what that truly means.A.J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. His wife has died, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. Even the books in his store hav...

Everyone loves cats! What's not to love? In this book you will find 101 Hilarious jokes about the cats, and everything we enjoy laughing about our feline friends. Fill your days with laughter, give this book as a gift, or use it to entertain your loved ones. These punny jokes make great icebreakers and will lighten any mood. Great to use in a classroom, near events, or times when you just need a laugh.This collection of jokes is clean fun and family friendly, with no violence or of...

Available together in ebook for the first time ever, this trio of brilliant short stories showcases the writing talent of number one Sunday Times bestseller Mark Billingham.Dancing Towards the Blade:They are waiting for the boy on his way home, the racist thugs. For Vincent, it is the latest in a string of violent events his family has faced since moving to England. But Vincent knows something that the thugs don't: he has in him the spirit of his father who,...