Counterpoint: 634 books

“These stories were my kind of stories—a little weird and magical and bittersweet.” —Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author   A middle-aged masochist in love with a comatose man. A gay birthday clown lamenting the loss of his beloved dog. An amateur veterinarian keeping watch over...

“Beautifully evokes scenes of two girls adrift in the . . . bohemian beach culture . . . a breathtaking, fiercely feminine take on American magical realism.” —Interview Magazine Set in Long Beach, California, beginning in the 1970s, The Salt God’s Daughter follows Ruthie and her older...

A clever and engaging collection of “darkly funny, sexy, and very smart” stories about women on the brink of disaster—and the edge of grace (Tom Perrotta).   The women featured in these stories have one thing in common: They’re all having a terrible day. There’s the housewife so entranced...

“A madcap tale reminiscent of the complex, riotous comedies Aristophanes wrote” from the author of The Good Fairies of New York (Library Journal). With his rival playwrights hogging all the local attention and his own festival sponsor conspiring against him—withholding direly needed funds...

**“**Monroy captures the mysterious essence of what tugs at our hearts, what makes certain human relationships love affairs, friendships, partnerships.” —Interview Magazine   After her traditional engagement to her high school sweetheart falls apart, Liza Monroy faced the prospect of another...

“Captivating and disturbing” stories from an exciting and original new voice: “Think Mary Gaitskill or Miranda July, but more demented” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).   Ball explores the darker edges of love and sex and death, how they are intimately and often violently connected, with...

“Condenses ten years of obsessive correspondence into a fragmented, sometimes funny, sometimes nightmarish, often paradoxical portrait of Wuornos.” —Muzzle Magazine Between 1989 and 1990, Aileen Wuornos, a hitchhiking prostitute, shot, killed, and robbed seven men in remote Florida locations....

Animals and celebrities share unusual relationships in these hilarious satirical stories by an award-winning contemporary writer.   Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants—all have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David...

A “supremely wacky [and] astute” novel by a PEN Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist (The Washington Post).   In Los Angeles, Dean Decetes, a pornographer with messianic delusions, spins out of control, spending his time drinking himself into a stupor, getting beaten up by strangers he’s...

A powerful memoir “about a difficult childhood . . . tough stuff, honest and real” (The Oregonian). Peter Hoffmeister was a nervous child who ran away repeatedly and bit his fingernails until they bled. Home-schooled until the age of fourteen, he had only to deal with his parents and siblings...

After a string of box office bombs, a director heads back to his Southern hometown, in this novel from an “original, clever, funny writer” (Ann Beattie). Eric Warberg went to Hollywood to make it big. For many years, he was successful—until suddenly he was virtually unemployable. So when...

A hostage-taker hides a shocking secret in “a breakneck literary thriller that combines the worlds of conspiracy theory [and] reality TV” (National Post).   Without warning, a man, armed with explosives, seizes a television studio taking over a hundred terrified hostages. He offers no motive....

One of the Observer’s Best Science Books of the Year: A “fascinating” look at a groundbreaking birth-cohort study and what it has revealed (Nature). On March 3, 1946, a survey began in Britain that is, today, the longest-running study of human development in the world. It would grow to...

“One of the cleverest, most accessibly in-depth film books released this year . . . a smart-ass novelist exploring a cheesy-cheeky ‘80s sci-fi flick” (Hartford Advocate). Deep Focus is a series of film books with a fresh approach. Take the smartest, liveliest writers in contemporary letters...