Back to his familiar mischief is the obstreperous creature that romped so riotously through The Pig Did It, the best-selling first novel in Joseph Caldwell’s Pig Trilogy. But in Mr. Caldwell’s entertaining porcine sequel, The Pig Comes to Dinner, the porker has some more serious business to attend to. All of the charming characters of the previous book are present again in this delightful new story. Kitty McCloud has bought an ancient Irish castle with the profits from her popular revisions of classic novels like Jane Eyre, and is now hard at work on her “correction” of George Eliot’s “big mess of a novel The Bloody Mill on the Bloody Floss – the added expletives a measure of Kitty’s consternation.” Kitty’s new husband, Kieran Sweeney, is tending the castle’s herd of cows when he isn’t locked in loving if contentious wrestling holds with his fiery new bride, his former rival in one of their district’s oldest blood feuds. Kitty’s American cousin, Aaron McCloud, has arrived with his new wife, the former Lolly McKeever, to redeliver to Kitty and Kieran their wedding gift of the troublesome pig, who is not at all welcome at the castle. But over their lighthearted discord hangs a weightier problem – Kitty’s new home is inhabited by two comely ghosts from out of the castle’s troubled past. How this haunting couple is dealt with serves only to embellish the allure and humor of Mr. Caldwell’s uniquely theatrical storytelling.

An Irish castle is haunted by the ghosts of two youths. The owner's American nephew and his new wife arrive with a pig-- Novel blending romance, comedy, and Irish history.

When Bianca the pig and her piglets are exiled from the farm after eating the truffles they are supposed to hunt for, they find an unexpected friend in the wolf-filled forest.

When Baxter the pig hears about the joys of Shabbat dinner he tries to become kosher so that he can participate.

Joseph Caldwell’s rollicking Pig Trilogy, a charmingly romantic three-part tale of an American in contemporary Ireland

If Frank McCourt and Roddy Doyle were locked in a room with a barrel of Guinness and some pens, this is the wicked comedy they many write together. It is infused with beautiful descriptions of the theatrical Irish land and seascape.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year: The first collection of short stories from the critically acclaimed, prize-winning author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour These eleven stories by Joshua Ferris, many of which were first published in The New Yorker, are at once thrilling, strange, and comic. The modern tribulations of marriage, ambition, and the fear of missing out as the temptations flow like wine and the minutes of life tick down are explored with the characteristic wit and insight that have made Ferris one of our most critically acclaimed novelists. Each of these stories burrows deep into the often awkward and hilarious misunderstandings that pass between strangers and lovers alike, and that turn ordinary lives upside down. Ferris shows to what lengths we mortals go to coax human meaning from our very modest time on earth, an effort that skews ever-more desperately in the direction of redemption. There's Arty Groys, the Florida retiree whose birthday celebration involves pizza, a prostitute, and a life-saving heart attack. There's Sarah, the Brooklynite whose shape-shifting existential dilemma is set in motion by a simple spring breeze. And there's Jack, a man so warped by past experience that he's incapable of having a normal social interaction with the man he hires to help him move out of storage. The stories in The Dinner Party are about lives changed forever when the reckless gives way to possibility and the ordinary cedes ground to mystery. And each one confirms Ferris's reputation as one of the most dazzlingly talented, deeply humane writers at work today.