Twelve stories deal with loneliness, loss, the tragic banality of everyday life, and redemption.

Suffering from the terror of violence and death at the Khyber Pass, Christopher Ransom exiles himself in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan. Teaching English, associating with fellow expatriots, and practicing karate, he tries to forget the unforgetable.

No discussion of great modern authors is complete without mention of Cormac McCarthy, whose rare and blazing talent makes his every work a true literary event. A grand addition to the American literary canon, Suttree introduces readers to Cornelius Suttree, a man who abandons his affluent family to live among a dissolute array of vagabonds along the Tennessee river. "Suttree contains a humor that is Faulknerian . and a freakish imaginative flair reminiscent...

ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • One of the most influential crime novels ever written, by a legend of the genre.
Tough, hard-boiled, and brilliantly suspenseful, The Last Good Kiss is an unforgettable detective story starring C. W. Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar. Hired to track down a derelict author, he ends up on the...

A group of working-class Irish youths with a passion for the music of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding form a rock 'n' roll band and attempt to bring soul to Dublin.

Blinking Jack Stokes was a skinny tenant farmer, and Ruby Pitt Woodrow was "the carefully raised daughter of Carolina gentry ... They didn't fall in love so much as they simply found each other and held on for dear life."--Pbk. cover.

Like her first two award-winning novels (Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman), A Cure for Dreams is set in the rural and small-town South and draws richly upon the author's ear for comic turns of phrase and her sure grasp of the humor, pathos, and dignity of supposedly "ordinary" people. The determination of the women of the story to assert themselves in confining, dependent situations makes for uplifting, enjoyable reading.

This volume is a collection of short stories originally published in 1991 that reflect the author's experience of being surrounded by American influences while still being familiarly bound to her Mexican heritage as she grew-up north of the Mexico-US border. The short vignettes focus on the social role of women and their relationships with the men and other women in their lives. The majority of the characters are stereotypes: men embody machismo while...

"Welcome to Bailey's Cafe, where the foof may not be much but the ambience is graced by myth and magic. The cafe is home to Sadie, the lady-like alcoholic with a mania for cleanliness; to Sweet Esther, who caters to unspeakable appetites in a nearby "boarding house," taking payment only in white roses; and to Mariam, the Ethiopian child who may be the bearer of a miracle." -- Back cover.