It gets stolen and shot at. People make love in it and deliver drugs with it. It sits festering in garages and is restored to its former glory. It traverses the country several times and sees its share of tragedy and triumph. Within its 21 windows dwells a chorus of stories spanning four decades. THE VAN follows a 1964 Volkswagen microbus as it travels from the factory in West Germany to various spots around North America. The story is told in vignettes by different narrators, and it's not always obvious how the van figures in. The style of the prose also changes to match the historical...

Paris, 1937. On a sultry July evening, a beautiful American woman vanishes into thin air. At first the gendarmes don't believe she's really missing. Perhaps she's run off with a lover, they cynically suggest. But the woman's aunt knows better and feels helpless when ransom notes begin to arrive. Reporter Ansley Sage gets assigned to the story and launches an investigation that will take her headlong into the path of the most blood-thirty gang of killers Paris has ever known. Due to police indifference, Ansley takes risks that put her life in grave danger, but she gets help from a handsome...

Riotous and riveting, this is the story of a charming college professor who most definitely did not--but maybe did--kill his ex-wife. Or someone else. Or no one. Irby plays with the thriller trope in unimaginably clever ways.

Edwin Stith, a failed novelist and college writing instructor in upstate New York, is returning home for the weekend to Richmond, Virginia, to celebrate his mother's wedding--to a much younger man. Edwin has a peculiar relationship with the truth. He is a liar who is brutally honest. He may or may not be sleeping with his students, he may or may not be...