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  Encyclopedia Paranoiaca

  Henry Beard, Christopher Cerf

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  IGNORE THIS BOOK AT YOUR PERIL!Did you know that carrots cause blindness and bananas are radioactive? That too many candlelight dinners can cause cancer? And not only is bottled water a veritable petri dish of biohazards (so is tap water, by the way) but riding a bicycle might destroy your sex life? In Encyclopedia Paranoiaca, master satirists Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf have assembled an authoritative, disturbingly comprehensive, and utterly debilitating inventory of things poised to harm, maim, or kill you—all of them based on actual research about the perils of everyday life. Painstakingly alphabetized, cross-referenced, and thoroughly sourced for easy reference, this book just might save your life. (Apologies in advance if it doesn’t.) Beard and Cerf cite convincing evidence that everyday things we consider healthy—eating leafy greens, flossing, washing our hands—are actually harmful, and items we thought were innocuous— drinking straws, flip-flops, neckties, skinny jeans— pose life-threatening dangers. Did you know that nearly ten thousand people are sent to the emergency room each year because of escalator accidents, and, despite what you’ve heard, farmers’ markets may actually be less safe than grocery stores? And if you’re crossing your legs right now, you’re definitely at serious risk. Hilarious, insightful, and, at times, downright terrifying, Encyclopedia Paranoiaca brings to light a whole host of hidden threats and looming dooms that make asteroid impacts, planetary pandemics, and global warming look like a walk in the park (which is also emphatically not recommended). *** The Definitive Compendium of Things You Absolutely, Positively Must Not Eat, Drink, Wear, Take, Grow, Make, Buy, Use, Do, Permit, Believe, or Let Yourself Be Exposed to, Including an Awful Lot of Toxic, Lethal, Horrible Stuff That You Thought Was Safe, Good, or Healthy; All Sorts of Really Bad People Who Are Out to Get, Cheat, Steal from, or Otherwise Take Advantage of You; and a Whole Host of Existential Threats and Looming Dooms That Make Global Warming, Giant Meteors, and Planetary Pandemics Look Like a Walk in the Park (with Its High Risk of Skin Cancer, Broken Bones, Bee Stings, Allergic Seizures, Animal Attacks, Criminal Assaults, and Lightning Strikes)

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  The 1898 Base-Ball Fe-As-Ko

  Randall Platt

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  It seems that the FDR writer is back wanting more Fe-As-Ko stories from cowpoke Royal Leckner. This time it's 1897, Royal and E.M. have been married about four years. And so have Leviticus and Lou(ella) Perrault, owners of the Four Arrows ranch. Royal is still foreman of the ranch and caretaker of its owner. As he reminds us, Leviticus and Lou(ella) Perrault are "short a hat size," but "nice and honest, which is better than smart and fox-like any day." It's time to take the cattle to Portland for the annual sale, and Royal is bringing Leviticus along to teach him how "to sign on the dotted line." E.M. foresees trouble in Portland and decides she'd better go along as well. So the cattle gets loaded and all are headed for the city. Except, Leviticus who has managed to walk onto the train, down the aisle and right back off - something has caught his eye. It shouldn't be a surprise that a long-time rock thrower like Leviticus would get fascinated by a baseball. Once they get Levi back on the train, Lou(ella) says they are going to get themselves a base-ball in Portland. As it turns out (and things do turn out in Royal's life), the buyer isn't available when they go to sell the cattle, so it's declared a day off. E.M's off to buy hats and Royal goes shopping with Levi and Lou(ella) for a base-ball. Innocently enough, Royal accepts baseball tickets for an exhibition game from one of the local storekeepers. This probably wasn't the best place to take Leviticus for "he may only have a half mind, but the half he does have is damn hard to unset." Worse, Royal runs into E.M.'s half sister and full-time trouble, Augusta, who is also the owner of the Bowery Bulldogs. E.M. shows up and immediately takes exception in finding Royal in the club house drinking champagne with Augusta. Knowing this isn't going anywhere right, Royal decides to take his new fishing pole and get out of town, leaving E.M. to sell the cattle. Days later, E.M. shows up with a wagon overloaded with men passing the bottle, whooping, hollering and falling out. These are not men Royal recognizes. Like Jack sent to town to sell a cow, but coming back with magical beans, it seems that Leviticus traded the herd of 1200 cattle for his very own baseball team, just as Lou(ella) promised --and we thought she meant just the ball! Smart and fox-like, Augusta had Levi "sign on the dotted line" when E.M. wasn't looking. And now it is up to the Leckner's to look for the giant beanstalk, despite winter coming, no cash, and ten extra mouths to feed. But Royal and E.M. are not without resources; she has her father who is sitting in jail, the "seven vestal Burnbaums" daughters of Idlehour's late banker and Lou(ella)'s savant talent with numbers.

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  The Garden of Eden - A Novel

  Eve Adams

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  This is a parable for our times: a take on small town America that is hilarious, moving, and utterly originalEden, USA, is the perfect place to live until Ed Harris, the banker, finds his wife in bed with his best friend. Shotgun in hand, he escorts them to the door, and tells his friend: "Guess what? She's yours!""I've got a wife, Ed," says the friend."Now you have two..."Suddenly, Eden is turned upside down: love blossoms between the town drunk and his teetotaling neighbor, the Barrow Boys make parole, and the teenagers give the snooping sheriff's deputy more than a whiff of birdshot.The Garden of Eden is about loyalty, sticking with those you love, tolerance and forgiveness-and the simple solutions ordinary people find to keep small communities strong.

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  The Antiques - A Novel

  Kris D'Agostino

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  On the night of a massive hurricane, three estranged siblings learn that their father is dying. For the first time in years, they convene at their childhood home in Upstate New York, where the storm has downed power lines, flooded houses, and destroyed the family's antique store.The Westfalls are no strangers to dysfunction. But never have their lives felt so out of control. Armie is living in their parents' basement. In Manhattan, Josef, a sex-addicted techie, is struggling to repair his broken relationship with his daughters. Their sister, Charlie, who works in Hollywood as a publicist for a wayward young actress, just learned that her son has been expelled from preschool. Amid the storm, they come together to plan their father's memorial service, only to learn his dying wish-they must sell his priceless Magritte painting. As their failures are laid bare, they discover that hope often lurks in the darkest of places. And so, too, can hilarity.A rollicking tableau of life in all its messy complexity, The Antiques is a heartbreaking, nimble, laugh-out-loud funny send-up of modern family life.

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  Slouching Towards Kalamazoo - A...

  Peter De Vries

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  The classic American coming of age novel of a precocious young man and the lessons learned from his tutor by “a masterly entertainer and social satirist” (The New York Times).   It is 1963 in an unnamed town in North Dakota, and Anthony Thrasher is languishing for a second year in eighth grade. Prematurely sophisticated, young Anthony spends too much time reading Joyce, Eliot, and Dylan Thomas but not enough time studying the War of 1812 or obtuse triangles. A tutor is hired, and this "modern Hester Prynne" offers Anthony lessons that ultimately free him from eighth grade and situate her on the cusp of the American sexual revolution.   In Slouching Towards Kalamazoo, Peter De Vries finds the perfect vehicle for his eridute wit in Anthony’s restless adolescent voice. Demonstrating a fascination with both language and female anatomy, Anthony’s pitch-perfect narration propels this satirical coming of age tale through theological debates and quandaries both dermatological and ethical, while soaring on the De Vriesian hallmark of scrambling conventional wisdom for comic effect.

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  Poor Angus

  Robin Jenkins

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  “A blackly comic romp” of art, ambition, and sexual politics in the Scottish Isles: “a remarkable novel…written with the lightest of touches” (The Sunday Times, UK).   Struggling painter Angus McAllister has returned to the idyllic Hebridean island of his birth in the hope that it will inspire him to create his masterpiece. But soon, his privacy is invaded by Janet, a visitor with relatives on the island, who has decided that an affair with an artist would be the simplest way to incense and recapture her husband, a golf-fanatic devoid of imagination. So begins an irresistible story of comic lightness and serious implications; a tale told with Jenkins’s characteristic ironic wit that explores the attitudes of men and women to sex and relationships, and which focuses on the psychology of the artist and the justification, if any, for art.“Poor Angus is a strange, wonderful love story [and] Jenkins a remarkable writer whose gentlest touch induces the greatest of pleasures.”—The Times, UK

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