National Network for Equitable Library Service

An outlandishly funny, unambiguously bloody novel about fame, love, religion, politics, and appetite

It is one thing to die, alone and confused, trapped with your pants down around your ankles in the filthiest bus restroom in existence. It’s quite another thing to wake up during the autopsy, attack the coroner, and flee into the wintry streets of Toronto.

Ambition, failure, sex, and the service industry

A dark and comic novel, Congratulations On Everything tracks the struggles, frailties, and cruelly pyrrhic victories of the middle-aged owner of a bar-restaurant and a 30ish lunch-shift waitress.

Jeremy has bought into the teachings of an empowerment and success guru, hook, line, and sinker. A Toronto service industry lifer, he’s risen through the ranks until he finally takes the keys to his destiny and opens his own place, The Ice Shack.

"Eight or nine times a day, day after day, men and horses go out and line up and start running, and the next thing you know, you are in mystery-land." So says Leo, a sad-sack gambler with an incredibly intricate betting system. Leo is one of dozens of characters - some human, some equine - who struggle through two years in the life of horse racing. Unimaginably rich magnates rub elbows with stable managers struggling to make ends meet. Trainers and jockeys balance the precarious demands of owners and horses. Can't-miss colts canter next to glue-factory-bound geldings.

Hard-living Todd falls in love with Tami, and Tami's father does everything he can to crush the relationship. Todd is not about to give up the greatest thing that's ever happened to him. But when the unthinkable happens, the men dive into a tailspin that could consume them both.

In its first time in audio, Trout Fishing in America is an indescribable romp, by turns a hilarious, playful, and melancholy novel that wanders from San Francisco through America's culture, an exploration both of land and mind.

Originally published in the 1876 Christmas edition of The Graphic, Christmas at Thompson Hall is a Victorian tale concerning the proper Mr. and Mrs. Brown and their journey from southern France to Thompson Hall to celebrate Christmas with their relatives-a trip that becomes a comedy of errors once Mr. Brown's throat condition, a malady that almost prevented the trip entirely, worsens. This recording of Christmas at Thompson Hall was recorded as part of Dreamscape's Classic Christmas Stories: A Collection of Timeless Holiday Tales.

This is the first complete English-language translation of a classic of Yiddish literature, one of the great comic novels of the 20th century. The Zelmenyaners describes the travails of a Jewish family in Minsk that is torn asunder by the new Soviet reality. Four generations are depicted in riveting and often uproarious detail as they face the profound changes brought on by the demands of the Soviet regime and its collectivist, radical secularism.

Upon learning that he's the Antichrist, sixteen-year-old James Salley must discover how to navigate a world in which everything he's ever believed is wrong--and if it's possible to be the hero of a story when you've already been cast as the villain.

Colfer adds an entirely new chapter to the adventures and misadventures of Daniel McEvoy, the down-on-his-luck Irish bouncer at a seedy New Jersey bar who, with the help of a motley crew of unlikely characters, solved a bizarre string of murders--including the one of the girl he loved. But people around him continue to die mysteriously, and Daniel is called into action once again.

When the world's most horrible editor turns up dead, investigator Jon Scieszka has his work cut out for him. The suspect list is long. Very long. Think eighty-three-famous-YA-authors long, including Libba Bray, David Levithan, John Green, Lemony Snicket, Lauren Myracle--you get the picture. They've all got alibis, collected in this very anthology. But the question is … Who done it?