Meet Zelda McFigg. She is 4-feet 11-inches tall, 237 pounds, and convinced that she could be somebody, if only someone would recognize her inner beauty and star quality. Cousin to Ignatius J. Reilly (A Confederacy of Dunces) and Homer Simpson, Zelda runs away from home at age 14, and at age 49 ¼ writes this furiously funny memoir to "set the record straight" about her lifetime of indiscretions.

Fiction. "What does Beth Mayer's intimate collection of short stories want to tell us? That the dead have much to teach the living, that madness can point the way to clarity, that the burn of departing never cools, that inside abandonment can be redemption. Mayer's prose rattles like bones, proving that no matter how far you live in the margins, you can't escape the telling."--Desiree Cooper "Beth Mayer's stories unflinchingly explore the tough and the tender sides of family life as well as offering us a window into the lives of those we often prefer not to notice when we pass them in our neighborhoods. I was moved by the deep emotional truths in WE WILL TELL YOU OTHERWISE, and the slyly ironic and often sardonic wit of these stories kept me smiling all the way through. What a lovely collection of stories this is!"--David Haynes "The stories in Beth Mayer's WE WILL TELL YOU OTHERWISE are indelible treasures, full of poignancy and pathos. Mayer is the best kind of writer--one who doles out her wisdom with humor, who mines the intricacies of love, friendship, and family effortlessly."--John Jodzio

Today is Christmas Eve. Today is my birthday. Today I am fifteen. Today I buried my parents in the backyard. Neither of them were beloved. Marnie and her little sister, Nelly, are on their own now. Only they know what happened to their parents, Izzy and Gene, and they aren't telling. While life in Glasgow's Maryhill housing estate isn't grand, the girls do have each other. Besides, it's only a year until Marnie will be considered an adult and can legally take care of them both. As the New Year comes and goes, Lennie, the old man next door, realizes that his young neighbors are alone and need his help. Or does he need theirs? Lennie takes them in—feeds them, clothes them, protects them—and something like a family forms. But soon enough, the sisters' friends, their teachers, and the authorities start asking tougher questions. As one lie leads to another, dark secrets about the girls' family surface, creating complications that threaten to tear them apart. Written with fierce sympathy and beautiful precision, told in alternating voices, The Death of Bees is an enchanting, grimly comic tale of three lost souls who, unable to answer for themselves, can answer only for one another.

Fiction. Like his literary antecedents--John Barth and Jorge Luis Borges both haunt these pages--Thomas Cotsonas takes (and offers) great pleasure in the revelation that the central (though often occult) subject of fiction is always inevitably fictiveness itself. But clever and self-aware as these fictions are, they are also fully alive to the cathartic power of narrative, and the potential for a well-drawn character to show us something human, true, and surprising. NOMINAL CASES thrills both mind and heart--a rare delight.--Joel Brouwer

Presents a tale of two couples, David and Kate, high school students, and Sherrie and Frank, an exotic dancer and her carnival barker. When a traveling carnival arrives in small town Scoggin, Maine, after World War II, it sets in motion a battle between sensuality and puritanism, love and punishment that moves inevitably toward a tragic conclusion.

In “a worthy companion to . . . Boys of Summer,” a Pulitzer prize winning journalist “exploits the power of memory and nostalgia with literary grace” (New York Times). From award-winning New York Times columnist Dan Barry comes the beautifully recounted story of the longest game in baseball history—a tale celebrating not only the robust intensity of baseball, but the aspirational ideal epitomized by the hard-fighting players of the minor leagues. On April 18, 1981, a ball game sprang eternal. For eight hours, the night seemed to suspend a town and two teams between their collective pasts and futures, between their collective sorrows and joys—the shivering fans; their wives at home; the umpires; the batboys approaching manhood; the ejected manager, peering through a hole in the backstop; the sportswriters and broadcasters; and the players themselves—two destined for the Hall of Fame (Cal Ripken and Wade Boggs), the few to play only briefly or forgettably in the big leagues, and the many stuck in minor-league purgatory, duty bound and loyal forever to the game. With Bottom of the 33rd, Barry delivers a lyrical meditation on small-town lives, minor-league dreams, and the elements of time and community that conspired one fateful night to produce a baseball game seemingly without end. An unforgettable portrait of ambition and endurance, Bottom of the 33rd is the rare sports book that changes the way we perceive America’s pastime—and America’s past. “Destined to take its place among the classics of baseball literature.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Bottom of the 33rd is chaw-chewing, sunflower-spitting, pine tar proof that too much baseball is never enough.” —Jane Leavy, author of The Last Boy and Sandy Koufax

Set against the wild beauty of Montana as a woman attempts to heal from a devastating accident, this generational saga from the award-winning author of The Widow Nash is a heartfelt examination of how the deep bonds of family echo throughout our lives. For Polly, the small town of Livingston, Montana, is a land charmed by raw, natural beauty and a close network of family that extends back generations. But the summer of 2002 finds Polly at a crossroads: a recent head injury has scattered her perception of the present, bringing to the surface long-forgotten events. As Polly's many relatives arrive for a family reunion during the Fourth of July holiday, a beloved friend goes missing on the Yellowstone River. Search parties comb the river as carefully as Polly combs her mind, and over the course of one fateful week, Polly arrives at a deeper understanding of herself and her larger-than-life relatives. Weaving together the past and the present, from the shores of Long Island Sound to the landscape of Montana, The Center of Everything examines with profound insight the memories and touchstones that make up a life and what we must endure along the way.