Now a major film starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, a novel “like life itself: joyous, painful, moving, tragic, mysterious, and not to be missed” (Booklist, starred review). The Robinas have shared a wonderful life for more than sixty years. Now in their eighties, Ella suffers from cancer and John has Alzheimer's. Yearning for one last adventure, the self-proclaimed “down-on-their-luck geezers” kidnap themselves from the adult children and doctors who seem to run their lives and steal away from their home in suburban Detroit on a forbidden vacation of rediscovery. With Ella as his vigilant copilot, John steers their ’78 Leisure Seeker RV along the forgotten roads of Route 66 toward Disneyland in search of a past they're having a damned hard time remembering. Yet Ella is determined to prove that, when it comes to life, you can go back for seconds—even when everyone says you can't. “Come to the end and you’ll say, Oh my God.” —Elmore Leonard, New York Times bestselling author of Get Shorty “A sweet natured travelogue that’s about the end of the road in more ways than one.” —Bob Morris, author of Assisted Loving “An affecting road novel. . . . Ella’s wise, feisty voice turns what could be a sappy melodrama into an authentic and funny love story.” —Publishers Weekly “Both achingly sad and intensely romantic, this unforgettable story of a last honeymoon hooked me from the first page.” —Marjorie Hart, author of the national bestseller Summer at Tiffany “Zadoorian is true to these geezers. He draws them in their most honest light . . . I hoped for a book that would make me laugh during these tight times, and I was rewarded.” —Los Angeles Times

“[An] eight-track flashback of a novel set in 1970s Detroit” from the international bestselling author of The Narcissism of Small Differences (O, the Oprah Magazine, Summer 2018 Reading List). Set in early 1970s Detroit, a divided city still reeling from its violent race riot of 1967, Beautiful Music is the story of one young man’s transformation through music. Danny Yzemski is a husky, pop radio–loving loner balancing a dysfunctional homelife with the sudden harsh realities of freshman year at a high school marked by racial turbulence. But after tragedy strikes the family, Danny’s mother becomes increasingly erratic and angry about the seismic cultural shifts unfolding in her city and the world. As she tries to hold it together with the help of Librium, highballs, and breakfast cereal, Danny finds his own reason to carry on: rock and roll. In particular, the drum and guitar-heavy songs of local legends like the MC5 and Iggy Pop. In the vein of Nick Hornby and Tobias Wolff, yet with a style very much Zadoorian’s own, Beautiful Music is a touching story about the power of music and its ability to save one’s soul. “A sweet and endearing coming-of-age tale measured in album tracks.” —The Wall Street Journal “For Danny, cracking the seal on a fresh piece of wax and dissecting cover art and liner notes are acts of nigh religious experience that unveil to him a community of fellow rockers across Detroit . . . It’s in these small moments—a lonely boy experiencing premature nostalgia—that Zadoorian shines.” —The Washington Post “A disturbing yet humorous tale of beleaguered adolescence in 1970s Motor City.” —Steve Miller, author of Detroit Rock City

One of our most iconic childhood games receives a creepy twist as it becomes the gateway to a nightmare world. Don't let the Seeker find you!Twelve-year-old Zee is back now. He disappeared for a year and nobody knows where he went or what happened to him. Not even his best friends Justin, Nia, and Lyric. But ever since Zee has been back, he's been... different. After Zee freaks out at his friends playing hide-and-seek at an odd party in his backyard -- the first time his friends are back together since his reappearance -- strange things begin to occur. Everyone who played in the game has a mark on their wrist. And then they disappear.The kids are pulled into a shadow world -- the Nowhere -- ruled by the monstrous, shape-shifting Seeker. Justin and his friends will have to band together and face their worst nightmares to defeat the Seeker or lose themselves to the Nowhere forever.

When a new family moves in next door, Joe's mum explains that they are asylum seekers. Joe hears that they are silence seekers, especially as Mum adds that they need peace and quiet. When he sees a young boy from the family sitting disconsolately on the steps, Joe decides to help him find a quiet place in the noisy and chaotic city. A simple, moving story which is the perfect way to gently open discussion around the refugee crisis.

A comedy of compromise thaT “brims with wit, passion and soul” from the international bestselling author of Beautiful Music (The Millions, A Most Anticipated 2020 Book). Joe Keen and Ana Urbanek have been a couple for a long time, with all the requisite lulls and temptations, yet they remain unmarried and without children, contrary to their Midwestern values (and parents’ wishes). Now on the cusp of forty, they are both working at jobs that they’re not even sure they believe in anymore, but with significantly varying returns. Ana is successful, Joe is floundering—both in limbo, caught somewhere between mainstream and alternative culture, sincerity and irony, achievement and arrested development. Set against the backdrop of bottomed-out 2009 Detroit, a once-great American city now in transition, part decaying and part striving to be reborn, The Narcissism of Small Differences is the story of an aging creative class, doomed to ask the questions: Is it possible to outgrow irony? Does not having children make you one? Is there even such a thing as selling out anymore? “While everyone is trying so hard to act normal, The Narcissism of Small Differences revels in its own weirdness.” —Ben Folds, New York Times bestselling author/singer-songwriter “In a literary landscape where most are hell-bent on outplotting their peers, Michael Zadoorian has sculpted a thriller from everyday life.” —Josh Malermann, author of Bird Box “The Narcissism of Small Differences is one of [Zadoorian’s] best. He has become an essential chronicler of the life in Detroit at the beginning of our century.” —Stateside, Michigan Public Radio

A bloody murder. An open and shut case? In Oliver Cromwell's London, nothing is as it seems - Captain Damian Seeker must battle to find justice, when an innocent man's life hangs in the balance. 'Challenges CJ Sansom for dominion of historical crime' Sunday Times 'The best historical crime novel of the year' Sunday Express London, 1654. Oliver Cromwell is at the height of his power and has declared himself Lord Protector. Yet he has many enemies, at home and abroad. London is a complex web of spies and merchants, priests and soldiers, exiles and assassins. One of the web's most fearsome spiders is Damian Seeker, agent of the Lord Protector. No one knows where Seeker comes from, who his family is, or even his real name. All that is known of him for certain is that he is utterly loyal to Cromwell, and that nothing can be long hidden from him. In the city, coffee houses are springing up, fashionable places where men may meet to plot and gossip. Suddenly they are ringing with news of a murder. John Winter, hero of Cromwell's all-powerful army, is dead, and the lawyer, Elias Ellingworth, found standing over the bleeding body, clutching a knife. Yet despite the damning evidence, Seeker is not convinced of Ellingworth's guilt. He will stop at nothing to bring the killer to justice: and Seeker knows better than any man where to search.

Christianity receives a lot of attention in the media, but the most frequently discussed version represents a type of Christianity that sometimes turns people away from the Church. Kissing Fish presents a postmodern systematic theology of progressive Christianity, a growing movement that reclaims the radical message of the Gospel. This informative, contemplative, and entertaining book will guide you through the beliefs that inspire us to love one another in the transformative way that Jesus proclaimed, including practices that will take your faith to a new level. Kissing Fish is a scholarly yet thoroughly accessible introduction to progressive Christianity. While the intended target audience for this work would seem to be those who have either left the Christian faith or never adopted it at all; the work is filled with pearls of wisdom for all of us, whether associated with Christianity or not. Kissing Fish is a truly remarkable work, serving both as a reminder of the beauty and grace that form the central tenets of the faith, while offering a graceful yet prophetic rebuttal to its more exclusionary tendencies. Kissing Fish is part theological text and part tell-all personal spiritual journey. Imagine a down-to-earth combination of the works of Marcus Borg, Anne Lamott, Jim Wallis, Rob Bell, Shane Claiborne, Diana Butler-Bass, Brian McLaren, Walter Wink, Wes Howard-Brook, and Donald Miller. A profound romp that informs and inspires.

A quirky and compelling collection of short stories set in and around Detroit, by award-winning local writer Michael Zadoorian.

A thought-prooking thriller and a literate page-turner, Stephen Amidon's The New City takes aim at the suburban American dream and captures the real nightmare behind it. It is 1973, the Vietnam War is winding down and the Senate Watergate hearings are heating up. But Newton, Maryland, is a model community, an enclave of harmony and prosperity. Through years of cunning legal maneuvering and smooth real-estate deals, the white lawyer Austin Swope has made the dream of this new city a reality. His best friend is Earl Wooten, the black master builder who raised Newton from its foundations. Their teenaged sons, Teddy and Joel, each the repository of his father's deepest hopes for the future, are inseparable buddies. But cracks begin to appear in this pristiine and meticulously planned community, and an innocent misunderstanding is about to set the two men who control its quiet streets on a fateful collision course.

Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well. For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told— and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate. Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms—a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft.