by Merle Drown (2000)
"Jim Hutchins is holding a twelve gauge shotgun on his sworn enemy, his well-to-do brother-in-law, Emory Holler. What has made Jim snap?"--BOOK JACKET. "Well, Emory is rich because he's collected the insurance money for the supposedly accidental death of his wife, Jim's only sister. Pauline, Jim's wife, spends her spare time dancing naked for Emory. And Jim's best - his only - friend has suddenly died of an embolism."--BOOK JACKET. "In addition, the IRS is dunning Jim for back taxes; the town is about to seize the land on which the Hutchins have been living, in a trailer, since their house burned down; and each of his living children - two sons and a daughter - is in some sort of bizarre difficulty. Besides this, there is a panty thief roaming the area."--BOOK JACKET. "You might think this is enough for any man to confront but there is more, much more. Jim, an indomitable hero, shows us the hidden side of his small New Hampshire town with humor and penetrating insight into human frailty."--BOOK JACKET.
Gwen Cooper
When five-week-old Prudence meets a woman named Sarah in a deserted construction site on Manhattan's Lower East Side, she knows she's found the human she was meant to adopt. For three years their lives are filled with laughter, tuna, catnaps, music, and the unchanging routines Prudence craves. Then one day Sarah doesn't come home, and Laura, the daughter who hardly ever visits, arrives with her husband. And they're carrying boxes.
Kenji Kawakami
Features the best chindogu inventions, inspired devices designed to solve all the nagging problems of domestic life, from reading in the bathtub to having a portable subway strap.
Pete Dexter
After his father's murder during a union power struggle, Peter moves in with his uncle and cousin Michael, and as the boys grow up, their paths diverge, until they are drawn into a deadly round robin of violence and revenge.
William Trevor
"The Hill Bachelors contains a dozen new stories, set mostly but not entirely in Ireland.". "In 'Three People', an ageing father waits for the proposal for his daughter that will never come from the man who once told a lie to save her; in 'Against the Odds', a con-woman who has plied her trade across the entire Six Counties fixes this time on a widower in a small inland town; and in the poignant title-story, the youngest son returns for his father's funeral to the family hill farm to find it has become his unwelcome inheritance.". "William Trevor writes about the lonely and the sad, about those who have something to hide and those who barely have control over their lives."--BOOK JACKET.