National Network for Equitable Library Service

A collection of off-the-wall short stories by Japan's leading contemporary novelist. An elephant vanishes; hunger drives a couple to rob McDonalds; an insomniac wife wakes in a different world. Murakami is a cult figure throughout the world with an increasing reputation.

Chet has smelled a lot of unusual things in his years as trusted companion and partner to P.I. Bernie Little, but nothing has prepared him for the exotic scents he encounters when an old-fashioned traveling circus comes to town. Unfortunately Peanut, the headlining pachyderm, has gone missing. How does an elephant vanish without a trace? Hired by Popo the Clown--who has his own reasons for wanting to find out what happened--Chet and Bernie are in hot pursuit after Chet takes a few sniffs in Peanut's trailer and picks up her one-of-a-kind scent.

Every writer know you can't go home again. But that's just what is required of West Texas expatriate Dee Bennett-Kaufmann when her mother is badly injured in a mysterious car accident. Single-again "Dr. Dee" has never been on the "A-team" in her trendy East Coast MFA program. When a prestigious summer fellowship gives her the chance to finally finish her book, salvage her career, and spend some quality time with her college-age daughter - Dee's certain her luck is about to change. Returning to care for her irascible, widowed mother threatens all of that.

Titus Maccius Plautus' career is on the decline. Once renound for bringing Greek comedies to the Roman world, now he struggles to stage a single play. Unlucky with money and unlucky in love, Plautus faces the world with wry dignity. This could be the performance that brings back fame and fortune, or the one that ends it all. Engaging, thoughtful, and funny, The Comedian dives into the rough and tumble world of arts in its infancy.

The stories in Farnsworth’s The Things She’ll Be Leaving Behind explore what it means to be a woman in the modern world, struggling against circumstances that are often unfair, inexplicable, and destructive. The women in this book don’t always behave in ways that are sensible or advisable or, for that matter, likely to result in success, but there’s a warped logic to what they do and the reasons they do it are intrinsically human.

Meet Marcus O, a man who's feeling older but not much wiser as he sets jaded eyes on that last vigorous stretch before the dreaded sunset years. With the approach of the terminal semester of a long-winded career, he's wondering "What next?" and closing down leftover business. First, there's Judaea, a workplace nemesis inspiring Marcus' visions of reprisal. And there's L'Oréal Zhang, a style-conscious student and frequent visitor to Marcus' university office whose shallow interests seem calculated to aggravate him alone.

Christian McPherson's second collection of short stories serves up a boozy menu of mixed cocktails. Whether it be funny twisted tales of suburban marriages on the rocks, glue sniffing felons looking to win a radio contest, or Humpty Dumpty drinking the greatest cup of coffee in the world, these stories will have you reading and laughing to the last drop. There is also a serious side to Going Fly, in which we examine loss and what we do to carry on in the face of overwhelming tragedy.

Robin MacFarland is a smart, funny, self-deprecating journalist who works for the Home and Garden section of a major Toronto newspaper while she grapples hilariously with her weight, drinking and spirituality. The city news is slow and Robin has been assigned to dig up a real estate development story in cottage country near Huntsville, Ontario. Her editor has given her a long list of potential angles including water pollution, light pollution, traffic congestion, boat traffic, taxes, electricity costs, golf courses, fertilizer, algae blooms, land grants and native rights.

Hilarity and queer magic realism twist the throttle when Jackie, a loner with a secret bank-robbing persona, meets Vespa: sexy, sculpture-welding artist and collector of vintage motorbikes. Still planning elaborate revenge on a New York ex-lover, Jackie tests both her new relationship and the loyalties of her friends, a rag-tag gang of post-punk eccentrics, realizing how love changes hatred only after her scheme runs out of control.

What will endure...love, revenge, or Archibald? It's the summer of 1990 in West Vancouver. Maggie, a 23-year-old nursing school drop-out, has just started a job as a live-in personal assistant to Archibald, a flamboyant, elderly novelist with a quick wit, sharp tongue, and a penchant for nasty practical jokes. In between picking up his medications and groceries, Maggie desperately tries to hold the unravelling threads of her life together.