William Traquair, son of a former slave, has had all the advantages his father lacked, thanks to the wealthy man who employs Traquair senior as a butler. When William graduates from Bowdoin, he gets a job as valet to Oscar Wilde during his U.S. tour in 1882, and travels the country with him, registering the great man's bon mots and having his own adventures--romantic and otherwise.

Undoubtedly one of the most inventive and unorthodox memoirs ever written, A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS became an instant bestseller, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and made Dave Eggers's name as a brilliant, risk-taking young writer. Orphaned in college when his parents both died of cancer in the span of 32 days, Eggers and his kid brother Toph moved to San Francisco and set up a delightfully unorthodox life together, a mix of carefree adolescence and the unexpected responsibilities of adulthood. In between enrolling Toph in school, finding a home, juggling various romances, and auditioning for THE REAL WORLD, Eggers founded MIGHT, an independent magazine featuring a potent blend of commentary, cynicism, and comedy—the same raucous style that would fuel his memoir. Though AHWOSG turns the memoir genre on its head and teems with self-mockery and postmodern trickery, beneath the cleverness it is a remarkable story of youthful hope and zeal, a story that became an instant classic for the youth generation at the dawn of the 21st century.

This collection of 15 of Dave Eggers's stories includes some that have been highly acclaimed and several that have never been published before. "Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance" is about a young man coping with his cousin's suicide attempt. "After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned" (narrated by a dog) was anthologized in SPEAKING WITH THE ANGEL, edited by Nick Hornby(2001). "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" got an honorable mention in the 2003 BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES (2003). The stories range in setting from California to Tanzania to Costa Rica to Ireland, and back again to Interstate 5 in California.

A former CIA agent is enlisted to stop the serial killings of a Russian defector.

This posthumously published novel, the successor to Ellison's classic "The Invisible Man", celebrates June 19, 1865, known as "Emancipation Day," when Union soldiers told Texas blacks that they were free. The story moves back and forth from past to present, beginning with a present-day march on Washington prompted by the assassination attempt on a black senator.

Ellroy's 1995 novel AMERICAN TABLOID is a fictionalized recreation of the days just before President Kennedy's assassination. THE COLD SIX THOUSAND, the sequel to AMERICAN TABLOID, picks up almost where the earlier book leaves off. Taciturn heroes (or is it anti-heroes?) Pete Bondurant and Ward Littell return, to wend their way along the interwoven avenues of American politics and crime. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.