When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils, Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town's council...

Falsely accused of rape, Lester Ballard is released from jail, and a trip to the dry-goods store, an errand to the blacksmith, and other incidents are transformed into scenes of the comic and the grotesque.

After an epidemic causes most New Yorkers to flee, Candace Chen stays behind and continues her routine: going to work, getting paid, and blogging about the deserted city. Eventually, though, Candace will have to leave--putting her at the mercy of a power-hungry IT specialist named Bob.

A collection of stories in which a killer describes his hits. In one he kills the wrong man and has to do a repeat, in another he must decide which client to kill first, both having put out contracts on each other. As he goes about murdering, J.P. Keller, a quiet unobtrusive man, reflects on his profession.

"A quirky group of seniors attempts to solve one murder while covering up another--with the help of an enterprising tortoise--in this twisty, darkly funny mystery from the author of Three Bags Full. It has been an eventful morning for Agnes Sharp and the other inhabitants of Sunset Hall, a house share for the old and unruly in the sleepy English countryside. Although they have had some issues (misplaced reading glasses, conflicting culinary tastes,...

Keller is a regular guy. He goes to the movies, works on his stamp collection. Call him for jury duty and he serves without complaint. Then every so often he gets a phone call from White Plains that sends him flying off somewhere to kill a perfect stranger. Keller is a pro and very good at what he does. But the jobs have started to go wrong. The realization is slow coming yet, when it arrives, it is irrefutable: Someone out there is trying to hit

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"Jesus' Son meets Reservoir Dogs in a breakneck-paced debut novel about love, war, bank robberies, and heroin. Cleveland, 2003. A young man is just a college freshman when he meets Emily. They share a passion for Edward Albee and ecstasy and fall hard and fast in love. But soon Emily has to move home to Elba, New York, and he flunks out of school and joins the army. Desperate to keep their relationship alive, they marry before he ships out to Iraq....

Trying to keep the death of their parents a secret, Marnie and her little sister Nelly are on their own until several residents in Glasgow's Hazelhurst housing estate suspect that something is not right.

"An exuberant black comedy about love, grief, sex, guilt, and one woman's hairbrained scheme to tranquilize her voraciously amorous girlfriend for a few days so that she might pay off her drug dealer, make some soup and finally get some peace and quiet"--

"A stand-up comedian recalls some of his darkest moments and traumatic memories from childhood on stage in front of a live audience"--