Thirty-six stories on unpleasant characters creating unpleasant situations. The story, In Waking Hours, is on a corporate type who vents his hate of people by mimicking them, while in Slops a professor exploits a bowl disorder to keep people away. Some stories are only a few sentences long.

With his mother’s help, RJ learns that his problems happen because he doesn’t listen or pay attention to directions from her, his school principal, teachers, or even his friends. Author Julia Cook’s book shows RJ as well as all K-6 readers the steps to the fundamental social skills of listening and following instructions. When RJ learns to use these skills the right way, he has the best day of his life! This book is the first in the BEST ME I Can Be! series to teach children social skills that can make home life happier and school more successful. The book includes tips for parents and educators on how to effectively teach listening and following instructions skills to kids.

What won’t we try in our quest for perfect health, beauty, and the fountain of youth? Well, just imagine a time when doctors prescribed morphine for crying infants. When liquefied gold was touted as immortality in a glass. And when strychnine—yes, that strychnine, the one used in rat poison—was dosed like Viagra. Looking back with fascination, horror, and not a little dash of dark, knowing humor, Quackery recounts the lively, at times unbelievable, history of medical misfires and malpractices. Ranging from the merely weird to the outright dangerous, here are dozens of outlandish, morbidly hilarious “treatments”—conceived by doctors and scientists, by spiritualists and snake oil salesmen (yes, they literally tried to sell snake oil)—that were predicated on a range of cluelessness, trial and error, and straight-up scams. With vintage illustrations, photographs, and advertisements throughout, Quackery seamlessly combines macabre humor with science and storytelling to reveal an important and disturbing side of the ever-evolving field of medicine.

"A collection of ten short stories that all take place in the same day about kids walking home from school"--

National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill’s debut collection, Bad Behavior—powerful stories about dislocation, longing, and desire which depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe generation that is searching for human connection. Now a classic, Bad Behavior made critical waves when it first published, heralding Gaitskill’s arrival on the literary scene and her establishment as one of the sharpest, erotically charged, and audaciously funny writing talents of contemporary literature. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called it “Pinteresque,” saying, “Ms. Gaitskill writes with such authority, such radar-perfect detail, that she is able to make even the most extreme situations seem real…her reportorial candor, uncompromised by sentimentality or voyeuristic charm…underscores the strength of her debut.”

Fiction. WORSTED is a collection of fourteen new stories (214 pages) by the author of The Complete Gary Lutz. Some excerpts appeared in Chicago Review, Lake Effect, and South Carolina Review, as well as online at Hobart, Post Road, and Southwest Review.

One night a puppy,who is always late coming home finds there is no dessert for him. On board pages.