Brief essays by New York Times bestselling author Michael Perry on memorials and mercy, storms and farewells, family and fowl, barnyard ballets, the Sunday night sads, the wisdom of roadies, cucumbers and kindness, quotidian asparagus, appropo malaprops, pickleball, sushi boats and weird TV, the poetics of garlic, contrails, Mobius mind-grooves, quietude, Christmas tree injuries, cats, waffle houses, puffy partridges, bonfire bonhomie, dating in a hearse, and more. Gathered from his most r...

In the 1990s, when he was a magazine freelancer hustling books off a card table at craft fairs, the mall, and out of his car trunk, Michael Perry self-published two books: Why They Killed Big Boy and Other Stories and Big Rigs Elvis, & the Grand Dragon Wayne. In 2005, after the success of Perry's book Population 485, Harper Perennial published Off Main Street, a collection of Perry's essays, magazine articles, and short fiction. Big Boy's Big Rig: Th...

In 1545, in a remote Carpathian monastery, a tormented monk carves a throne from black oak felled beneath a blood moon. Its armrests are clawed hands straining to seize, its seat a lattice of thorns, its back an inverted Last Judgment where demons drag screaming angels into hell. Cursed in its final hour by a dying anti-cardinal, the Whispering Throne grants its sitter visions of tomorrow—exactly twenty-four hours ahead—but always two paths: one true, one the perfect, smiling lie. Choose w...

A part-time emergency medical technician humorously chronicles life in a small Wisconsin town, featuring tales of romance and auto repair.Hilarious and heartfelt, Truck: A Love Story is the tale of a man struggling to grow his own garden, fix his old pickup, and resurrect a love life permanently impaired by Neil Diamond. In the process, he sets his hair on fire, is attacked by wild turkeys, and proposes marriage to a woman in New Orleans. The result is a su...

When farmer Harold wakes to find his wife dead beside him in bed and snow threatening to crush the last life from his dwindling farm, he takes drastic steps toward a fresh start. Set in a world of stark wintry beauty, Forty Acres Deep is the brief, unrelenting tale of one person's attempt to make sense of a world he no longer recognizes while pitilessly calling himself into account. Seamed with grim humor and earthy revelations, it is an unforgiving story...and yet leaves open the...

J. R. R. Tolkien fans who long for more of the joy they get from The Lord of the Rings will find it in the writings of William Morris. He created the literature that Tolkien brought to such perfection. As a young man writing his future wife, Tolkien mentioned the inspiration he was getting from Morris: "Amongst other work I am trying to turn one of the short stories [of the Finnish Kalevala] . . . into a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris' romances with chunks of poetry in between...

"Every writer has advice for aspiring writers. Mine is predicated on formative years spent cleaning my father’s calf pens: Just keep shoveling until you’ve got a pile so big, someone has to notice. The fact that I cast my life’s work as slung manure simply proves that I recognize an apt metaphor when I accidentally stick it with a pitchfork. . . . Poetry was my first love, my gateway drug—still the poets are my favorites—but I quickly realized I lacked the chops or insights to survive ...

Jeanne DuPrau's The City of Ember meets Louis Sachar's Holes in this imaginative and humorous middle grade debut from Michael Perry, New York Times bestselling author of the adult novels Population: 485 and Truck: A Love Story.When the world started to fall apart, the government gave everyone two choices: move into the Bubble Cities…or take their chances outside.Maggie's family chose to live in the world that was left behind. Deciding it's time to grow up and grow tough, Ma...

New York Times bestselling humorist Michael Perry makes his fiction debut with this hilarious and big-hearted tale, a comic yet sincere exploration of faith and the foibles of modern life that blends the barbed charm of Garrison Keillor, the irreverent humor of Christopher Moore, and the audacious insight of Chuck Klosterman.Life is suddenly full of drama for low-key Harley Jackson: A woman in a big red pickup has stolen his bachelor’s heart, a Hummer-driving predatory dev...

This book teaches you how to evaluate a distributed system from the perspective of immutable objects. You will understand the problems in existing designs, know how to make small modifications to correct those problems, and learn to apply the principles of immutable architecture to your tools.Most software components focus on the state of objects. They store the current state of a row in a relational database. They track changes to state over time, making several basic assumptions:...

The beloved memoirist and bestselling author of Population: 485 reflects on the lessons he’s learned from his unlikely alter ego, French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne."The journey began on a gurney," writes Michael Perry, describing the debilitating kidney stone that led him to discover the essays of Michel de Montaigne. Reading the philosopher in a manner he equates to chickens pecking at scraps—including those eye-blinking moments when the bird gobbles something too...

“You can read Michael Perry’s Coop as an outrageously funny comedy about a semi-hapless neophyte navigating the pitfalls (and pratfalls) of the farming life. Please do, in fact. But scratch a little deeper, past Perry’s lusciously entertaining and epigrammatic prose, his ultra-charming combo of Midwestern earnestness and serrated wit, and you’ll find a reflective, sincere, and surprisingly touching-at times, even heart-cracking-story about a man struggling to put down roots.” — Jonathan Mi...