Fiction
"Quietly entertaining, thought-filled. . . . The narrative voice is
particularly congenial--cool and unflappable, often humorous."
--Washington Post Book World
Not since The Moviegoer has a first novel limned the human condition with such originality and subtle insight. A small-town iconoclast who is at once deeply principled and occasionally as absurd as the world he rebels against, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (or Horace) has assumed the name of a Roman poet and has forsworn automobiles, and entertains himself by telephoning strangers to ask them what love is or what...

Michael "Caruso" Taylor is a man with a problem. He can't speak. In fact, he can't do much of anything the way he once used to. A successful English professor, he can hardly compose a coherent sentence, or remember much of anything he once knew. On top of this, he is slowly regressing toward infancy. He calls it "The Wasties," a condition with no known cause and no known cure. He throws his sippy cup. He bites his nurse. He tries to wall himself into his bedroom. He tries to run away. But as Caruso slips further and further away from sanity and adulthood, his mental life begins to soar....

"Maisie at 8000 Feet" is the story of an eight-year old girl who can fly and her idyllic summer in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey that ends in a moment of catastrophic loss. Following the death of her mother, Maisie travels the Pine Barrens with her artist/archaeologist father; meets his cousin and confidante, Sally, who wants to repair the little girl s heart; and flies over it all trying to see how her life could have taken such a turn.
Many years later, her son gone to college and her marriage ended, Maisie struggles to reconnect with the aging Sally. Doing so, she hopes to understand...