Barry Rachin: 49 books

Dick wants fun. He has no dog. He has no cat. No Spot. No Puff. But he has a plan. See Dick board the plane. See Dick fly away. Far, far away. Hello happiness! Goodbye Jane

* Bethany Glaspell approached the first-ever meeting with Great-uncle Vern, a man who returned from the jungles of Vietnam with a Hmong bride and warped personality, much as a cat burglar might plan his next heist, telling no one, neither friend nor family, her intentions. * There are five levels...

Sarah is travelling to rural Maine to visit an old friend, Midge Parker, who disappeared under peculiar circumstances almost a decade earlier. She drives 400 miles only to discover that Midge has moved on again without leaving any forwarding address. But the journey's end offers an unexpected revelation.

"Mr. Jacobson, the old Jewish guy who lives on Bickford street, sniffs little girls' bicycle seats," eight year old Benjamin Carter announced cavalierly as though the topic made for polite dinner conversation. The family had just sat down to the evening meal. Grace Carter poured some gravy on her mash potatoes, cleared her throat and asked, "Where exactly did you learn this?"

Sixteen-year-old Ned Scoletti is travelling north on a Greyhound bus from Fort Pierce, Florida to Spaulding, Massachusetts, to visit Aunt Josie. Problem is, his mother’s identical twin sister died when Nick was just a toddler. Or maybe not.

Phoebe’s Aunt Janet, who has been married six times, is advising her niece on affairs of the heart. Good Luck Phoebe!

Ralph Tucker wants to reconnect with an old flame, a woman who wears 500-dollar, Orvis, genuine hornback alligator belts. If the failed romance is resurrected from the dead, the middle-aged man may need a second job.

Ruth Ostrowski’s midlife crisis hadn’t arrived in the normally prescribed manner. Rather, it snuck up on her incrementally, one negligible tribulation after another; it bushwhacked her with night sweats, sent her caterwauling toward menopause and the outer rim of her twilight years. Now, compounding...

Parker Salisbury is dating a girl with the social graces of a cigar store Indian. So why is he giving Lilly an engagement ring later this evening?

Dora's face, an aesthetic work in progress, exudes an unfinished blankness - as though God had become distracted and wandered away from the wet canvas before completing a meager handful of details. Not that any of this makes a difference to lovelorn Harry Jankowski.

Mavis Calhoun, who works the cash register at the Shop Rite Supermarket, is going to teach Harry Wong Smith the fine points of Rumi’s mystical poetry and common decency.

Beatrice Goldberg doesn't much like Hispanics, biker broads, Franciscan monks, skinheads, or even salt-of-the-earth blue collar types, but she is going to get a double dose of all of the above, when she visits Our Lady of La Salette Shrine in Attleboro, Massachusetts.

Ava Frick works second shift at the Texaco Gas Mart where, when business is slow, she reads Soren Kierkegaard and drops the I Ching. The other day she got five broken lines ( __ __ ) and one solid ( _____ ). Not a good omen!

Kendra Ryder just gave fifteen year old Frankie Dexter a slab of fresh-cut tulipwood along with the advice, "When you’re feeling bad, just scuff the wood with 120-grit sandpaper, grab a whiff and you're guaranteed to feel a whole lot better!”