In a sequel to the celebrated collection of stories Nobody's Mother comes an honest and poignant collection of essays from men who have forgone fatherhood. Statistics Canada data show that seven per cent of women and eight per cent of men intend to remain childless. Nobody's Father gives readers fresh, honest insights into that male eight per cent. Ranging in age from young manhood to late middle age, some gay and some straight, and making their homes across North America, the contributors explore the issues of what it means to live a life without children. While some writers admit they are haunted by feelings of failure to live up to their own fathers' expectations and to carry on the family name, others admit to knowing from an early age that parenthood was not for them and are content with the alternative lives they lead.

"I have never before read anything except Nabokov’s Speak, Memory that so relentlessly and shrewdly exhausted the kindness and cruelty of recollection’s shaping devices." —Geoffrey Wolff Born in Czechoslovakia, Mark Slouka’s parents survived the Nazis only to have to escape the Communist purges after the war. Smuggled out of their own country, the newlyweds joined a tide of refugees moving from Innsbruck to Sydney to New York, dragging with them a history of blood and betrayal that their son would be born into. From World War I to the present, Slouka pieces together a remarkable story of refugees and war, displacement and denial—admitting into evidence memories, dreams, stories, the lies we inherit, and the lies we tell—in an attempt to reach his mother, the enigmatic figure at the center of the labyrinth. Her story, the revelation of her life-long burden and the forty-year love affair that might have saved her, shows the way out of the maze.

Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and an Anglo mother, Urrea moved to San Diego at age three. In this memoir of his childhood, Urrea describes his experiences growing up in the barrio and his search for cultural identity.

The story of Dr. Thomas Barnardo, hero to the destitute and homeless of London's notorious East End. In 30 years, he and his co-workers rescued 60,000 children from the streets, caring for them in rural orphanages and by the novel means known today as "foster parenting." An engaging book.

Semaj Matthews is a private detective whose life revolves around helping people locate their lost loved ones. The one person he's been unsuccessful in finding is his own birth father, but the reason is that he never wanted to find him. He often tells himself that he doesn't care. He's become a successful man in spite of the fact that his only male role models were the great dads he watched on television each week. In the midst of planning his wedding to the love of his life, Semaj receives an anonymous tip that turns everything he's ever believed upside down. The caller tells him the name of his father, and he's shocked to learn that it's a man he's admired his entire life—America's favorite TV Dad, Wayne James. Frustrated, Semaj lashes out at the world and finds himself on the wrong side of the law, where only the Heavenly Father can save him and his earthly father.

They needed the perfect assassin. Boy Nobody is the perennial new kid in school, the one few notice and nobody thinks much about. He shows up in a new high school in a new town under a new name, makes a few friends, and doesn't stay long. Just long enough for someone in his new friend's family to die-of "natural causes." Mission accomplished, Boy Nobody disappears, moving on to the next target. But when he's assigned to the mayor of New York City, things change. The daughter is unlike anyone he has encountered before; the mayor reminds him of his father. And when memories and questions surface, his handlers at The Program are watching. Because somewhere deep inside, Boy Nobody is somebody: the kid he once was; the teen who wants normal things, like a real home and parents; a young man who wants out. And who just might want those things badly enough to sabotage The Program's mission. In this action-packed series debut, author Allen Zadoff pens a page-turning thriller that is as thought-provoking as it is gripping, introducing an utterly original and unforgettable antihero.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls, this slyly funny, moving novel about a blue-collar town in upstate New York—and about Sully, one of its unluckiest citizens, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years—is a classic American story. "Remarkable.... A revelation of the human heart." —The Washington Post Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Russo, is storytelling at its most generous. Nobody’s Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, and Melody Griffith. Look for Everybody’s Fool, available now, and Somebody’s Fool, coming soon.