Novel, memoir, and anti-memoir, The Trouble with Being Born depicts the lives of Frances and Joe, husband and wife. Told in their own alternating voices, they recall their lives, separately and together, and the divergent trajectories of their origins and aspirations.Frances's story moves in reverse: beginning with her dementia in old age, her narrative moves backwards into lucidity, through a cruel and loveless marriage, the birth of her son Jeffrey, and into a childhood ...

A crime novel loosely based on the masses and songs of the 17th century Flemish composer Pierre de la RueMasses and Motets is a tale composed of four basic interwoven threads, corresponding to the four-part choral writing of Pierre de la Rue’s service music. The first thread comes from the diaries of a recently murdered priest, Father Andrea Vidal, former secretary to the notorious Father Marcial Maciel. The second thread is the mystery story, a police pro...

On the surface a murder mystery—a detective’s search for the killer of five people in Denver—Expectation is also, among other things, a meditation on the relationship between language and music.In his newest novel, Jeffrey DeShell draws on the musical innovations of Arnold Schoenberg—by turns traditional, serial, and atonal—to inform his grammar and language. Moving progressively through specific Schoenberg compositions, DeShell complicates the surface of his text into lyr...

An audacious transformation in prose of fourteen Modernist filmsFrom film to film, Jeffrey DeShell follows a forty-something failed film studies academic—The Professor. While The Professor is reinvented with each new chapter (or film), what remains is DeShell’s inventive deconstruction and representation of modern cinema. At times borrowing imagery, plot, or character elements, and at times rendering lighting, rhythm, costuming, or shot sequences into fict...

"More engaging than any new fiction in years." —Chuck PalahniukAn unforgettable work of fiction that peers into the soul of a tough Midwestern American town to reveal the sad, stunted but resilient lives of its residents. Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place.Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are irresis...

New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown delivers her signature Texas twang in this heartwarming tale about a cowboy and cowgirl who start off at each other's throats…and end up in each other's hearts.No big blond cowboy is going to intimidate this spitfireIf Slade Luckadeau thinks he can run her off his ranch, he's got cow chips for brains…This smart-talking ranch woman is giving him serious pains

A classic in the Bukowski poetry canon, Love Is a Dog from Hell is a raw, lyrical, exploration of the exigencies, heartbreaks, and limits of love.A book that captures the Dirty Old Man of American letters at his fiercest and most vulnerable, on a subject that hits home with all of us. Charles Bukowski was a man of intense emotions, someone an editor once called a “passionate madman.” Alternating between tough and gentle, sensitive and gritty, Bukowski lays bare the myriad facets of...

"Andrews is at her best in this thoroughly satisfying story with the right blend of mystery, romance, and sharply funny writing." — Orlando SentinelA delicious southern fiction tale of revenge and renovation from New York Times bestselling author Mary Kay AndrewsThe night before her wedding, in the middle of an oh-so-smart rehearsal dinner, interior decorator Keeley Murdock chances upon her fiancé and maid of honor in flam...

Charles Bukowski's posthumous legend continues to grow. Factotum is a masterfully vivid evocation of slow-paced, low-life urbanity and alcoholism, and an excellent introduction to the fictional world of Charles Bukowski.One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate autobiographical novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from ...

From the award-winning author of Little Pretty Things comes this gripping, unforgettable tale of a mother's desperate search for a lost boy.Anna Winger can know people better than they know themselves with only a glance-at their handwriting. Hired out by companies wanting to land trustworthy employees and by the lovelorn hoping to find happiness, Anna likes to keep the real-life mess of other people at arms length and on paper. But when she is called to use her expertise ...

A studio executive leaves his family and travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to hide for 20 years."Juliann Garey writes with stark, lucid power about the tumbling journey into madness and the agonizing climb back out."--Brian Yorkey, book and lyrics for Next to NormalIn her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul ...

Read this "enthralling" portrayal of the measures a mother will take to right the wrongs she's created while reigniting her rough and tough Texan bravery (Kathryn Stockett, bestselling author of The Help).Rose Mae Lolley's mother disappeared when she was eight, leaving Rose with a heap of old novels and a taste for dangerous men. Now, as demure Mrs. Ro Grandee, she's living the very life her mother abandoned. She's all but forgotten the girl she used to be-...