Richard Powers
In a time when much of the country sees red whenever the subject of gay marriage comes up, Dan Savage—outspoken author of the column Savage Love—makes it personal.
Dan Savage's mother wants him to get married. His boyfriend, Terry, says "no thanks" because he doesn't want to act like a straight person. Their six-year-old son, D.J., says his two dads aren't "allowed" to get married but that he'd like to come to the reception and eat
...The bestselling, award-winning author of The Last Summer of the Camperdowns returns with another rollicking, summertime family saga.
Maine's rugged, picturesque Monhegan Island is home to weathered lobster fishermen and curious tourists, a genial if sleepy group. But when Spark Monahan―rakish prodigal son―returns unannounced to the dilapidated family home, his arrival launches a summer the likes of which this quiet town has never
...23) Psycho II
You remember Norman Bates, the shy motel manager with the fatal mother fixation. Now, years after his horrific bout of butchery, Norman is at large again. Breaking free from the psycho ward, he cuts a shocking swath of blood all the way to Hollywood—where, it so happens, they are making a movie about Norman's life and crimes. A movie that suddenly and terrifyingly becomes a lot like real life.
24) The Cold Kiss
All Nate and Sara want is a new life in a new town, away from the crime and poverty of their past. So when they are approached at a roadside diner by a shady hitchhiker offering $500 for a ride to Omaha, they wonder if their luck might be changing. At first it seems like so much easy money—but within a few hours the man is dead.
Now, forced off the road by a blizzard and trapped in a run-down motel on the side of a deserted highway, Nate
...25) A Good Family
A dramatic, ambitious first novel of a Midwestern family's self-destruction and repair
Meet the Brunsons of Downers Grove, Illinois: Henry, the once-magical father, whose fear of aging and endangered career lead him to the nightclubs of Chicago's Viagra Triangle; his wife Julie, who struggles to reclaim her life with a bottle of Zoloft and dreams of her youthful independence; Charlie, the golden-boy son, who leaves the lucrative job his father
...Dazzling, enchanting, and epic, The Bells is the confession of a thief, kidnapper, and unlikely lover—a boy with the voice of an angel whose exquisite sense of hearing becomes both his life's tragic curse and its greatest blessing.
Moses Froben was born in a belfry high in the Swiss Alps, the bastard son of a deaf-mute woman, banished to the church tower to ring the Loudest and Most Beautiful Bells in the land each day. His life is simple
...27) The Underworld
Kevin Canty tells a story based on a real incident that begins with a disastrous fire in an isolated silver-mining town in Idaho in the 1970s. Everyone in town had a friend, lover, brother, or a husband killed in the mine. The Underworld traces the lives of the handful of survivors and their loved ones—a young widow with twin children, a college student trying to make a life for himself in another town, a life-long hard-rock miner—as
...In the insightful narrative tradition of Oliver Sacks, Monkey Mind is an uplifting, smart, and very funny memoir of life with anxiety—America's most common psychological complaint.
We all think we know what being anxious feels like—it is the instinct that made us run from wolves in the prehistoric age and pushes us to perform in the modern one—but for forty million American adults, anxiety is an insidious condition that
...29) The Ace: A Novel
Four Americans—a twenty-year-old social outcast, a breezily iconoclastic Army officer, a ruthless U.S. senator, and a guilt-ridden heiress—are inexorably drawn together in their struggles to deal with America's chaotic involvement in World War I. Their interwoven destinies lead from poverty-stricken slums through the opulence of 1917–1918 Washington, London, and Paris and, climactically, into the Western Front's vicious aerial combat, which
...In nineteenth-century Vienna, a drama of love, fate, and will is played out amid the intellectual ferment that defined the era. Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, is at the height of his career. Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe's greatest philosopher, is on the brink of suicidal despair, unable to find a cure for the headaches and other ailments that plague him.
When he agrees to treat Nietzsche with his experimental
...31) Nightblind
Ari Thor Arason is a local policeman whose tumultuous past and uneasy relationships with the villagers in an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland-where no one locks their doors-continue to haunt him.
The peace of this close-knit community is shattered by the murder of a policeman-shot at point-blank range in the dead of night in a deserted house. With a killer on the loose and the dark arctic winter closing in, it falls to
...Every story can change a life.
Growing up isn't easy. Many young people face daily tormenting and bullying, making them feel like they have nowhere to turn. This is especially true for LGBT kids and teens who often hide their sexuality for fear of being bullied. Without other openly gay adults and mentors in their lives, they can't imagine what their future may hold. In many instances, gay and lesbian adolescents are taunted—even tortured—simply
...At once intimate and sweeping, Bottomland follows the Hess family in the years after World War I, as they attempt to rid themselves of the anti-German sentiment that left a stain on their name. But when the youngest two daughters...
On Monday morning, October 2, 2006, a gunman entered a one-room Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. In front of twenty-five horrified pupils, thirty-two-year-old Charles Roberts ordered the boys and the teacher to leave. After tying the legs of the ten remaining girls, Roberts prepared to shoot them execution style with an automatic rifle and four hundred rounds of ammunition. The oldest hostage, a thirteen-year-old, begged Roberts to "shoot
..."I can't see, I can't walk, and can't do lots of other things. With all this, people might ask ‘How can I bear to live?' but I don't see it that way. Through my trials, God has given me experiences that taught me important lessons about life, which help get me through each and every day. The greatest gift I can give back to others is to share those experiences and lessons."—Patrick Henry Hughes
As featured on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
...36) Blackbird House
The wickedest, most wonderful science fiction story ever created in our—or any—time
Anything can begin at a party in California—and everything does in this bold masterwork by a grand master of science fiction.
When four supremely sensual and unspeakably cerebral humans—two male, two female—find themselves under attack from aliens who want their awesome quantum breakthrough, they take to the skies—and
...From the mind of the man Stephen King calls "a master of the macabre," comes a brilliant new collection of no-punches-pulled horror stories, some never before collected and many originals that have never been published anywhere before. Bentley Little can take the innocuous, twist it around, and write a story that will change your way of thinking. Walking Alone: Short Stories is a shining example of his talent to scare you, creep you out,
..."Is Google making us stupid?" When Nicholas Carr posed that question in an Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: as we enjoy the Internet's bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?
Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration yet published of the Internet's intellectual
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