David Sedaris became a star autobiographer on public radio, onstage in New York, and on bestseller lists, mostly on the strength of Santaland Diaries a scathing, hilarious account of his stint as a Christmas elf at Macy's department store. Sedaris's caustic gift has not deserted him in his fourth book, which mines poignant comedy from his peculiar ...more
"David Sedaris's ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art," (The Christian Science Monitor) is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this remarkable new book. Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of as...more
The best boy-meets-girl-meets-void story ever written. Professor Philip Engstrom is in love with Alice Coombs, a particle physicist who, unfortunately has fallen in love with Lack, an artificially created nothingness, a rift in the universe that absorbs some things and disdains others. For this reason, Alice finds Lack an irresistibly mysterious pe...more
The Fortress of Solitude is the story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. It’s a neighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along with games of stoopball. In that world, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. As Lethem follows the knitting and unravelin...more
From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comes this compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel.Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans o...more
Consumed by passion, Lucinda manages only to tear herself away from the Complainer to practice with the alternative band in which she plays bass. Hoping to recharge the band's creative energy. Lucinda "suggests" some of the Complainer's philosophical musings to the band's lyricist, Bedwin. When Bedwin transforms them into brilliant songs, the band ...more