Tuesday night: vodka and dancing at the Hungry Duck. Wednesday morning: posing as an expert on Pushkin at the university. Thursday night: more vodka and girl-chasing at Propaganda. Friday morning: a hungover tour of Gorky's house. Martin came to Moscow at the turn of the millennium hoping to discover the country of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and his beloved Chekhov. Instead he found a city turned on its head, where the grimmest vestiges of Soviet life exist side by side with the nonstop hedonism of the newly rich. Along with his hard-living expat friends, Martin spends less and less time on his studies, choosing to learn about the Mysterious Russian Soul from the city's unhinged nightlife scene. But as Martin's research becomes a quest for existential meaning, love affairs and literature lead to the same hard-won lessons. Russians know: There is more to life than happiness. Back to Moscow is an enthralling story of debauchery, discovery, and the Russian classics. In prose recalling the neurotic openheartedness of Ben Lerner and the whiskey-sour satire of Bret Easton Ellis, Guillermo Erades has crafted an unforgettable coming-of-age story and a complex portrait of a radically changing city.

Early one evening, I was patrolling alone and decided to stop a vehicle with its taillight out. I had no way of knowing that this seemingly routine decision would lead to a strange twist of fate years later... These true, first-hand accounts from law enforcement officials across the nation reveal how intuition, apparitions, UFOs, prophetic dreams, and other forces beyond our understanding have impacted them in the course of duty. The weird and unexplained experiences in this book take place in the midst of the death-defying gun battles, thrilling rescues, and heart-searing tragedies that police officers face every day—and reveal the fascinating inner lives of the heroic men and women behind the badge.

With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

“The inventive writers and illustrators who crafted these transporting stories just may convince you to trash your BlackBerry and buy some stamps.” –Frank Warren, author of PostSecret You’ve seen them at flea markets and in antique shops and used-book stores across the country: Vintage postcards inscribed with handwritten notes, evocative messages that capture a thought, an expression, a concern, a snapshot of someone’s life once upon a time. Jason Rodriguez, acclaimed editor of Elk’s Run, collected a remarkable array of these correspondences, dispersed them among thirty-three of comics’ greatest creators, and asked each to craft a story about the person who sent it. The result is a vividly imagined, gorgeously rendered graphic anthology illustrating tales of romance, adventure, hardship, and mystery. In Postcards, these gifted artists share some of the richest and most inventive work of their careers.

A collection of short stories by various authors, including Andrea Davis Pinkney, M.E. Kerr, and Anne Mazer, about adolescent girls coming of age.

When you learn about topics like history, Shakespeare, science, and politics at high school, the problem is that quite often some of the weirdest and most interesting stories are left out of the textbooks and exam papers. Pick up The Totally Awesome Book of Crazy Stories, your ultimate source of interesting facts about a wide range of diverse topics. What follows are some of the craziest, weirdest, funniest, wackiest, and most awesome stories that you'll have hopefully never heard before. This book is truly a quick read packed with information from cover to cover. In this amazing trivia book, you will find out:?How an impaled stork helped in our understanding of the natural world.?How you might be able to fool your doctor into believing you've given birth to a litter of rabbits ?How much Bach liked coffee, and how much Frederick the Great hated coffee.?How important pee was to the Ancient Romans, and how important farts were to 17th-century plague-fearing Londoners.?And so many more curiosities!Gathered in The Totally Awesome Book of Crazy Stories, you will find some of the craziest, weirdest, wackiest, and most awesome stories we could ever have told you. And what makes it even more awesome, is that there are a lot more crazy stories out there to tell! Grab your copy right now and start having fun!