A modest apartment in Via Gemito smelling of paint and turpentine. Its furniture pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio. Drying canvases moved from bed to floor each night. Federí, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced that he possesses great artistic promise. If it weren't for the family he must feed and the jealousy of his fellow Neapolitan artists, nothing would stop him from becoming a world-famous painter. Ambitious and...

In this darkly comic short story collection, Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, brilliantly weaves memory, fantasy, and stark realism to paint a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation. These twenty-two interlinked tales are narrated by characters raised on humiliation and government-issue cheese, and yet are filled with passion and affection, myth and dream. There is Victor, who as a nine-year-old...

In an autobiographical novel, a young man who goes by two names in two very different worlds--Gabriel at the university he attends, and Snoopz, a hard-living member of London's gangs--must to come to terms with who he really is and the life he's chosen for himself.

Having escaped an Australian maximum security prison, a disillusioned man loses himself in the slums of Bombay, where he works for a drug kingpin, smuggles arms for a crime lord, and forges bonds with fellow exiles.

During his college years, the very family solidarity that allows Francisco to survive as a child is tested. Not only must he leave his family when he goes to Santa Clara University, but while Francisco is there, his father abandons the family and returns to Mexico.

"Novelist Aaron Holland Broussard is shattered when his daughter Fannie Mae dies suddenly. As he tries to honor her memory by saving two young men from a life of crime amid their opioid-ravaged community, he is drawn into a network of villainy that includes a violent former Klansman, a far-from-holy minister, a biker club posing as evangelicals, and a murderer who has been hiding in plain sight. Aaron's only ally is state police officer Ruby Spotted...

Jean Shepherd, the great American humorist, radio raconteur, master storyteller, and bestselling author, has left his indelible imprint on American culture. This collection of Jean Shepherd army stories was selected and transcribed from radio programs by Shepherd biographer Eugene Bergmann and is in print for the first time.--Publisher.

Francisco Jimenez, the son of Mexican immigrants, describes the challenges he faced as a student at Santa Clara University in California in the 1960s.

"Sophie had always been cynical about love--until she meets Marcus. His affection and doting praise melt away her defenses. The beginning of their relationship was a whirlwind romance, but over time she finds herself on uneven footing. Marcus lies. He's violently angry and bewilderingly inconsistent. Yet somehow he always manages to explain away his behavior and to convince Sophie that it's all in her head. The whiplash of this toxic relationship...