In the best tradition of the great American memoir, "Any Road Will Take You There" is honest, unflinching, and tender. A middle-age father takes the reader on a five-thousand-mile road trip, the one he always wished he'd taken as a young man. Recently divorced and uncertain of the future, he rereads the iconic road story - Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" - and along with his two sons and his best friend, heads for the highway to rekindle his spirit. However, a family secret turns the cross-country journey into an unexpected examination of his role as a father, and compels him to look to the past...

A book of essays by award-winning author and journalist David W. Berner is the next best thing to storytelling around a bonfire. In "There's a Hamster in the Dashboard," Berner shares stories of "a life in pets"-from a collie that herds Berner home when the author goes "streaking" through the neighborhood as a two-year-old, to a father crying in front of his son for the only time in his life while burying the family dog on the Fourth of July. And from the ant farm that seems like a great learning experience (until the ants learn how to escape), to the hamster that sets out on its own road...