Alice, a flight instructor, has lived a protected life and is eager for new adventures when she moves from her hometown in Ohio to Charleston, South Carolina, and attends her first-ever baseball game. There, she sees local baseball star, Rafe Hembrey, who is sure to be drafted into the big leagues this year. Rafe has no time for romance, he's got scouts to impress, but when Alice comes to town he questions where his focus really lies.

The Minor Fall is a modern interpretation of an Old Testament saga. Davy Jessie is a young, personal injury trial lawyer working as an associate in a top-drawer law firm in Houston, Texas in 2005. In addition to trying difficult (sometimes impossible to win) cases assigned to him by the firm, Davy also assists Tim Sullivan (one of the named partners in the firm) in prosecuting more serious cases. Sullivan is a flamboyant, fashionable, facile at formulating a memorable turn of phrase, philandering litigator with a long history of trial victories and the material rewards that a contingency fee practice can yield. Davy is enamored with Sullivan and attempts to emulate Sullivan’s professional (and personal) behavior. After Davy wins one of the cases he was not expected to win, Sullivan designates Davy to lead the firm’s efforts in representing a group of landowners in eastern Kentucky whose properties have been contaminated by oil field production. Beth Sheehan, a contract lawyer hired by the firm to help with discovery on the case, travels to Kentucky with Davy where they have a brief affair, Davy returns to find that his wife Michelle is pregnant. The fallout from the affair and the stress of preparing the case send Davy spiraling into depression and emotional paralysis. Along the way down to his moral crisis, Davy contemplates existential questions about the nature of law, the importance of literature, the existence of God, and what (if anything other than single malt Scotch or cold chardonnay) gives meaning to life as he considers losing his wife, leaving the law firm, and abandoning the practice of law.

Continually occupied by its indigenous peoples, as well as a siren to waves of pioneers, the Northwest has long fostered a sense of isolation and opportunity. Alice Wheeler's subjects embody both. Internationally known for her photographs of Nirvana, Bikini Kill, and the punk-feminist bands of Riot Grrl, Wheeler is drawn to people and landscapes that possess unique strength and beauty. Hers are the lesser-seen realities of Seattle's history over the last three decades: not the incessant rain and coffeehouse earnestness represented in films and sitcoms, but the glory of the drag scene; the devastation of AIDS; the freedom of choice celebrated at Hempfest and protest rallies; brilliant sunsets and radiant clouds; and a music scene that for decades has captivated devotees internationally. This is her first monograph.

Jason, a twelve-year-old autistic boy who wants to become a writer, relates what his life is like as he tries to make sense of his world.

"I met her at an all-time low . . . the worst night of my life-a time I never wanted to remember." "It was a night I could never forget." "When it came to women, I swore I was done with wishful thinking. Ball and my coaching career were all that mattered." "I reminded him it wasn't." "She was everything I was afraid of." "He was everything I'd ever wanted." "She was fire-an irresistible piece of southern heaven that I couldn't stay away from. "He was smoke that clouded me in every imaginable way." "And the sex . . ." "Dear God, the sex . . ." "I fell hard, and she gave me hell at every turn." "I made a promise I was hell bent on keeping." "And you kept it." "Hell yes I did." "F*ckin' A."

A penetrating study of ordinary people resisting the Nazi occupation—and, true to its title, a dark comedy of wartime manners—Comedy in a Minor Key tells the story of Wim and Marie, a Dutch couple who first hide a Jew they know as Nico, then must dispose of his body when he dies of pneumonia. This novella, first published in 1947 and now translated into English for the first time, shows Hans Keilson at his best: deeply ironic, penetrating, sympathetic, and brilliantly modern, an heir to Joseph Roth and Franz Kafka. In 2008, when Keilson received Germany's prestigious Welt Literature Prize, the citation praised his work for exploring "the destructive impulse at work in the twentieth century, down to its deepest psychological and spiritual ramifications." Published to celebrate Keilson's hundredth birthday, Comedy ina Minor Key—and The Death of the Adversary, reissued in paperback—will introduce American readers to a forgotten classic author, a witness to World War II and a sophisticated storyteller whose books remain as fresh as when they first came to light.