Hypatia Hogan is driven to New Hampshire by her father, Mick, in his broken-down Rambler for a job interview at Penfield Prep, almost convinced that she will not get the position because her father had just told her that he had mailed a newspaper clipping with her resume describing a near riot recently when she was chosen Miss Hudson County over some local favorites. Little did she know that the headmaster and English Department Chair had their fingers crossed that she won't turn down the job as 47 others had after they learned that the opening had been created because the last teacher was...

Volume Two continues the adventures, mishaps and indiscretions of the world of Penfield Prep from which Headmaster Wellington escapes with his mischievous wife until the heat dies down. She had been arrested as a hooker after being found half-naked on a busy street while researching material for a novel. He leaves the campus in charge of his assistant, Dr. Seymour Snipe, erudite and generally competent except for one peculiar habit: his fetish for stealing little girls' underthings from the village laundromat. This provides an opportunity for ambitious Dr. Yang Sun, the peripatetic teacher...

Readers who seek a vivid and memorable picture of urban boyhood in the first half of the 20th century need look no further. Boyd to Malachy to Chance describes the world of a young boy during the Great Depression (Boyd) through a scholarship to a Prep school (Malachy) to army service in Europe during World War II (Chance) We see the inhibited advances of the youth to his first love when he leaves for the army, where his horizons broaden as he meets young men from other parts of the country. Then the shipping of his unit to Britain, to the beaches of France and to the frozen woods around...

Rimsky is a delightful collection of short stories ranging in styles and topics from the serious to the hilarious. There are tales of animals like the title story, a warm appreciation of a memorable pet to the satirical account of a man who invents a device to rid the world of garbage. Rimsky, always insightful, is a reader's grab bag of surprises.

The Love Chateau is the story of a Shangri-La for lovers. It is preceded by seven different kinds of love stories, not easy to categorize because most of the principal characters are not usually thought of as lovers, although the warmth we associate with love is there, wearing different clothes. Here the reader will also find stories of social comment, mystery, magical realism, and, most of all, humor. One finds humor in the tale of the Irishman who did not believe in baths but used Vicks VapoRub instead of soap, the adventures of the inventors of sperm necklaces and the locksmith who...

From Flaubert with Love is actually four books in one. The first part, beginning with the story of a faithful and loving golden retriever (Flaubert) is a series of seven stories and ending with a novella (If the Shoe Fits, Steal It), each about the adventures of dogs and their human companions. The second and longest section (11 stories) is devoted to humor and satire from the hilarious "A Little Lust for the Elderly" in which a sometimes coquettish and most of the time kinky octogenarian KO's a mobster, to an examination of the law in Utah where a woman could actually be given the death...