Wonderful town

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Amber Dermont

Damage Control displays Amber Dermont's remarkable gift for portraying characters at crossroads. In "Lyndon," a daughter visits presidential landmarks following the death of her father. In "Damage Control," a young man works at an etiquette school while his girlfriend is indicted for embezzlement. A widow rents herself to elderly women and vacations with them as a "professional grandchild" in "Stella at the Winter Palace." And in "The Language of Martyrs" a couple houses a mail order bride on behalf of the husband's Russian mother.

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Willa Cather

The first of three volumes presenting the writings of Willa Cather includes her early book of stories and first four novels. The troll garden: Cather's first short story collection, originally published in 1905, depicts characters who seek the realm of beauty and imagination, but are confronted by the vulgarity and brutality of American society. O pioneers!: In Nebraska at the end of the nineteenth century, Swedish immigrant Alexandra Bergson leads her family to success, but not without personal sacrifice. The song of the lark: Follows the life of Thea Kronberg from her childhood in 19th-century Colorado to her career as a renowned opera singer. My Antonia: The reminiscences of a New York lawyer, Jim Burden, about his boyhood in Nebraska, particularly a young Bohemian girl named Antonia Shimerda, are set against the backdrop of the American assimilation of the immigrant. One of ours: The son of a prosperous Nebraska farmer yearns to leave his prairie home.

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A. Manette Ansay

Here are the lives of rural people struggling to make sense of the isolated and often intensely religious worlds in which they live. Marie, a young wife and mother, recalls the effects of a statutory rape trial on her small community. Stuart, a devout teenage boy, dares to rename himself "Start," the only significant thing he has ever done without first consulting God. Widowed Eliza discovers her husband's ghost in the bathroom, flipping through pages of the Popular Mechanics magazines she had thrown out after his death.

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Rob Byrnes

Meet Brett Revere. A failed actor and recently fired temp, he's created a life centered on survival and hopefulness. Plucky doesn't pay the rent, but if you use your charm and good looks to convince other people that you're already wealthy--this of course connects you to other wealthy people who are happy to buy you things as long as you're one of them. When Brett meets Jamie Brock at a watering hole for rich, older gay men and the younger men who love their wallets, sparks fly--even after they discover they're both playing the same game. Soon the two are mixing it up with a "Velvet Mafia" of gay power-brokers, suspicious socialites, and social climbers, while running away from compromising Internet photos, creepy roommates, the threat of exposure, and their own nagging consciences.--From publisher description.