A group of strangers traveling through a surreal afterlife learn about themselves and each other as they seek a mysterious man named Von Lagerhaus.

One minute Rawanzel Johnson was in a Buffalo, N.Y., […]

Booze, brawls, sex and schizophrenia—such is the artist’s life in Paris, according to this raucous satire. When Patsy Burke, a world-famous Irish sculptor living in France, wakes up in his hotel with his body torn and bloody and no recollection of how it got that way, he’s not particularly surprised. A raging alcoholic given to beating [...]

A callow young hotshot gets taken down more than a few pegs in this caustic, darkly humorous tale of the travails—and unlikely consolations—of traumatic brain injury. Matt Riggs, a 29-year-old sportswriter in Jacksonville, Fla., has everything he wants: good looks, a beautiful girlfriend named Amanda, a manipulative way with words and a…[Read more]

Driving a Volkswagen Beetle with an alternative engine-technology, an engineer races from New York to Paris and tries to outwit those bent on stealing the car. Ed Talbot, engineer and owner of a fledgling alternative automotive testing company, has just been offered an intriguing opportunity. German scientist Dietrich Otto has developed a…[Read more]

A transcontinental Cinderella story set in the Great Depression. Orphaned as a young child, Linda McLane lives a life of servitude and physical abuse with her guardians, a stereotypically villainous aunt and uncle. Alarmed by Linda’s plight, a kindly reverend notifies her other aunt, prominent Hollywood actress Vera Sinclair, who promptly whisks…[Read more]

In an attempt to redeem his family’s honor, a man returns to keep the lighthouse where his father had failed to do his duty. Keepers of the lonely lighthouse on Race Rock, off the shore of New London, Conn., had to learn to deal with intense isolation. The wife of Nathaniel Bowen, a keeper in the [...]

In Winther’s thriller, a vacation goes perilously awry when two friends encounter danger, intrigue and drug smugglers in the exotic resorts and mountain villages of Peru. Along with her best friend Carrie, legal secretary Jan Fielding arrives in Peru hoping for a relaxing, glamorous vacation away from the office. But almost immediately it’s…[Read more]

Veteran short-story writer Ayer strikes gold with these enchanting sketches of the motley relatives and neighbors who peopled her mother’s rural West   Virginia girlhood–back when the 20th century was young and spry. In 1903, Nellie Wister was 8, the eldest daughter of a successful farmer and a proud homemaker with deep roots in Chinkapin Creek, [...]