Set in a provincial Victorian neighborhood, the author explores the complex social relationship and the struggle to hold fast to personal tragedy in a materialistic environment.

During the summer of 1971 in a small Texas town, thirteen-year-old Toby and his best friend Cal meet the star of a sideshow act, 600-pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world.

The daughter of a Coney Island boardwalk curiosities museum's front man pursues an impassioned love affair with a Russian immigrant photographer who after fleeing his Lower East Side Orthodox community has captured poignant images of the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. "An extraordinarily imaginative and immersive novel, this one set in New York from 1911-1925"--

Eccentricity defines daily life in Rome, Wisconsin, where the Tin Man from "The wizard of Oz" is murdered, a student brings a severed hand to school for show-and-tell, and a woman runs over her husband with a steam roller pleading "not guilty by reason of menopause." Sheriff Jimmy Brock has seen it all. Indeed, behind the tidy picket fences of this quirky little town lie all the same problems and prejudices found in the big city, except here everyone...

"It's 1992 in Bleak Creek, North Carolina, a sleepy little place with all the trappings of an ordinary Southern town: two Baptist churches, friendly smiles coupled with silent judgments, and an unquenchable appetite for pork products. Beneath the town's cheerful façade, however, Bleak Creek teens live in constant fear of being sent to The Whitewood School, a local reformatory with a record of putting unruly teens back on the straight and narrow--a...

Mass murders, kidnappings and a flasher may be troubling to the residents of Fernwood, Ohio. But pigtailed, gingham-frocked housewife Mary Hartman has a much more serious problem: waxy buildup on her kitchen floor. And while her husband Tom struggles in the bedroom and her best friend, country singer Loretta Haggers, struggles to make it big in Nashville, Mary teeters closer to the edge, desperate to save her marriage, keep her family together and...

"The people of Cedar Cove know how to celebrate Christmas. Like Grace and Olivia and everyone else, Beth Morehouse expects this Christmas to be one of her best. Her small Christmas tree farm is prospering, her daughters and her dogs are happy and well, and her new relationship with local vet Ted Reynolds is showing plenty of romantic promise. But-- someone recently left a basket filled with puppies on her doorstep, puppies she's determined to place...

"From one of our premier writers, scholars, and public intellectuals: a surprising, inspiring, often boldly infuriating, highly instructive and entertaining compendium of curiosities regarding African Americans. In 1934, 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof: A Short Cut to the World History of the Negro was published by Joel A. Rogers, a largely self-educated black journalist and historian. Now with élan and erudition--and winning...