The Permanent Press Ord: 139 books

Mr. Porter and the Brothers Jones is a strange yet entertaining account of an eccentric man’s struggle to reconcile the old-fashioned morals with which he was brought up and his own natural urges.

“Combining fact, folklore, and a shopworn twist of revisionist history, Meltzer’s eccentric debut joins the legion of books about the legendary gunslinger Billy the Kid.” —Publishers Weekly

Growing up in Oklahoma, Darcy endures her parent’s battling, her father’s abandonment, and her mother’s determination to make their way in the world by taking in a succession of boarders. Frank Wilson, an itinerant worker, appears at the dinner table one evening and soon becomes the man she...

In a suburb north of New York City there is a cloistered monastery. The tranquility of the nuns is shattered when Sister Damian of Mary receives a grisly gift: three severed hands and three feet. Put in charge of the investigation is fifty-five-year-old Det. Eliaphus Daniel Janah. A Jew, he has a...

In this first novel, Sofia Shafquat combines the insightful humor of Cathy Guisewite with a fresh new literary voice and a quintessentially California milieu. She speaks to women of the nineties who still remember lifetimes spent waiting for elusive and resistant men. What makes them such shadows? What would it have taken to make them real?

Set in England, Boston, and the Caribbean, this Pinteresque, artfully crafted story describes a relationship between Justine, a young dancer, and Roy, her philosophy teacher at Oxford. It is a story of love and sex, pain and intellect, and ultimate redemption. The story is narrated by Justine, who...

A white man and a black woman discover the depth of their differences, and an unexpected bond, in this urban drama. Edmund, long-divorced and lonely, offers shelter to Careese, who is temporarily homeless. Good intentions on both sides give way to mutual distrust and resentment, but what begins...

The second novel by the author of Passing Game, a story set in a privately funded workshop in an isolated Amish village.

Told in a series of vignettes, tall tales, and remembrances, and peopled by a host of characters as wild as the lives they lead, the immigrant community of 6th Street, Taylor, Nevada is home to a mixed bag of Eastern Europeans.

John Okas begins a proposed series of novels investigating the ancestry of two nebulous characters, Arthur and Morning Black. Tracing their family tree, Okas takes this Alex Haley theme on a detour through the ribald pageantry of American history and culture. The result is a rich collage of characters...

Mr. Right is a novel that defies categorization, at once scary, erotic and very funny. It is a measure of the book’s spell that at the precise moment it has us on the edge of our seats, it can still make us laugh out loud.

The Reluctant Exhibitionist is the autobiography of an unconventional psychiatrist.

Three Wishes for Jamie is the playful tale of a dreamy young Irishman who is given three wishes in the hills of rural West Ireland and comes to the United States to the state of Georgia to pursue them.

This irrepressible first novel appeared in Canada, in 1984, and concerns a perfect golden boy who, when he finishes high school, has it all. He’s handsome and smart, the star of the hockey team, has a beautiful girlfriend, seven sisters and a mother who fawn over him, and three dogs that adore him....