"The irresistible Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is now staring down a VA cardiologist's estimate that he only has a year or two left, and he's busy as hell keeping the news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman he carried on with for years... the ultra-hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren't still best friends. Sully's son and grandson, for whom he was...

In 1750, without warning or apparent reason, the mineral springs of the colonial resort town of Bath, New York, ran dry. A little more than two hundred years later, after numerous warnings and for too many reasons, Sully, the unluckiest man in this unlucky town, isn't doing too hot either. He's broke, out of a job, and the owner of a dead pickup truck. The good news? Sully has the dumbest man in North Bath as his devoted friend, a long-suffering,...

"Louis Charles ("Lucy") Lynch has spent all his sixty years in upstate Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for forty of them, their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he's had plenty of reasons not to be - chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive. Yet it was her shrewdness, combined with that Lynch optimism, mat had propelled them years ago to the right side of the tracks...

A comedy on university downsizing. To make sure the English department's budget is not cut, William Devereaux, its chairman, goes on TV threatening to kill a goose a day if that happens. Unfortunately a goose is beheaded soon after and Devereaux finds himself in hot water. The setting is Pennsylvania.

Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his fathers ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Lauras best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents respite from...

After eight commanding works of fiction, the Pulitzer Prize winner now turns to memoir in a hilarious, moving, and always surprising account of his life, his parents, and the upstate New York town they all struggled variously to escape.

For two decades Ned is shuttled back and forth between his mother, Jenny, and his father, Sam, after Sam abandoned them and now Ned struggles to win his father's affection while avoiding his sins.

"On a ship without a mission. No one remembers where they came from or where they're going. For hundreds of years, the starship Argonos, home of generations of humans, has wandered throughout the galaxy, searching for other signs of life. Now, a steady, unidentified transmission lures them toward a nearby planet." "On a planet without inhabitants. The colony has vanished. But deep within the planet's steamy jungles, the exploration team finds horrible...

It's Christmas Eve in icebound Wichita, Kansas, and this year Charlie Arglist just might have something to celebrate. Charlie is an attorney for the sleazy businesses of Wichita, along with his unsavory associate, the steely Vic Cavanaugh, the two have just successfully embezzled $2 million from Kansas City boss Bill Guerrard. But the real prize for Charlie is the stunning Renata, who runs the Sweet Cage strip club. Charlie hopes to slip out of town...

"[Eighty-four] well-known writers pay tribute to the bricks-and mortar stores they love and often call their second home."--Front jacket flap.