Try if you will, to imagine a time when automobiles were virtual bars, DWI roadblocks were in their infancy and MADD's mothers were still in utero. A time when "impaired" drivers were not vilified and hunted down like wild animals, but praised and admired for their deftness, agility, and multitasking ability. Ah my friends, but not so many years ago such an era did exist! Herein lies the tales of the brave young men who took to their vehicles, beer can in hand, fearing nothing but incompetent sober drivers and the occasional moving telephone pole.

Volume contains: 235 NY 572 (Dubied & Co. v. Pennsylvania R.R. Co.) 235 NY 232 (D'Eliza v. Ritondo) 235 NY 588 (Dermer v. Barrett) 235 NY 110 (Bloodgood v. Whitney)

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly what constitutes American, since the United States is such a melting pot, but this collection of nine short stories does capture the American experience. Perhaps diversity is what makes Great New American Short Stories so good.Voyles' stories are about the rich, the poor, the educated, the street-smart. They are written from a wide variety of experiences. For instance, one story is a witty tale of a quiet man's revenge on a nosy neighbor, while another is a lottery-winning man's revenge on his nagging wife. What if you found a suitcase full of money? What if you came face-to-face with someone you'd just vented your road rage upon? What if you were a prisoner in quarantine? In Me and Frank Cash at Camp Goode, the author writes about one man's experience in South Korea while in the Army. In The Rosebush, a woman's favorite adopted daughter dies unexpectedly. The mother plants a rosebush by her daughter's grave and tends to it lovingly. The story is told from another daughter's point of view.Voyles writes with the authenticity of the characters in mind.

Red Green was recycling material long before the green revolution got underway. Look at the autmobiles he's driven over the years. Many of those were assembled using the same basic method employed for The Green Red Green: by welding together the surviving bits of some old wrecks. In this case, we're talking about the three Red Geen books published long ago by other, inferior publishers: Duct Tape Is Not Enough, a collection of newspaper columns by Red Green's alter-ego Steve Smith on surviving middle age; Red Green Talks Cars; and Red's literary debut The Red Green Book, a souvenir of the TV show. The selection for his best-of pretty much made itself. Out went the Steve Smith columns with once-topical references; out went the material from The Red Green Book that was in the voices of the other characters (he's been carrying those bums for too long) and out went very little from the perenially hilarious Cars. The resulting mass of pieces have been well-shaken into a new mix; re-edited to new levels of sharpness and hilarity, and updated so that, for example, jokes about hairstyles now feature Russell Brand and not Rod Stewart. And the perfectly competent illustrations from the previous books have been replaced by much better, incompetent ones by the author, so that the look of this book very much resembles How to Do Everything.

THE BRAIDING OF DIVERSE LIVES: The Story of Mitsy Fisher focuses on friendship, loneliness, loss and love. At the story’s outset, Luke looks on as a culmination of Mitsy’s lifelong dream, her refuge for homeless, abused, and orphaned children, goes up in flames. Luke recalls his relationship with Mitsy and these streets during his adolescence. Now, Mitsy is gravely injured when she rushes back inside the burning building to save her beloved dog, Blackie. As she lies in a hospital bed in a medically induced coma, her future uncertain, her current boyfriend, Andy, revisits her past, reading to Mitsy from a series of notebooks and journals she has been keeping since she was a young girl. As Andy reveals more and more of Mitsy’s past---the death of her mother and brother when Mitsy was young, her complicated relationship with her father, the scholarship that took her to a special school in New York City as a teenager, the harrowing experience that tested her love of music, and her unyielding faith. He can only hope that the difficult life she’s lead will give her the strength to recover. Will Mitsy succumb to her injuries, or will love and faith carry her through, as they always have before?