Richard Russo

A comedy on university downsizing. To make sure the English department's budget is not cut, William Devereaux, its chairman, goes on TV threatening to kill a goose a day if that happens. Unfortunately a goose is beheaded soon after and Devereaux finds himself in hot water. The setting is Pennsylvania.

Mohawk, New York, is one of those small towns that lie almost entirely on the wrong side of the tracks. Its citizens, too, have fallen on hard times. Dallas Younger, a star athlete in high school, now drifts from tavern to poker game, losing money, and, inevitablym another set of false teeth. His ex-wife, Anne, is stuck in a losing battle with her mother over care of her sick father. And their son, Randall, is deliberately neglecting his school work...

Everybody's Fool In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain's value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects...

An absent-minded vicar of a rural parish is so distracted by the pressures of his job that he fails to notice his wife's dalliance with her brash golf instructor, his daughter's parade of new boyfriends, and his young son's regular trouncing by the school's bullies. Enter their new housekeeper, Grace, the answer to the family's prayers. Grace is a sweet old lady with her own distinctive definition of cleaning house, with an unusual way of solving...

Trying to get back on her feet, wild child Tanya looks to her buttoned-up, by-the-book sister Danica to help her get on track. As these polar opposites collide, with hilarious and sometimes disastrous results, Tanya discovers that Danica's picture-perfect life, including her mysterious boyfriend, may not be what it seems.

A powerful portrait of blue-collar America, a timeless tribute to the inherent decency and good humor that sustains working-class people in everyday life.

In this affectionate story of small town life in upstate New York, Sully, a fitfully employed 60-year-old construction worker, is a cheerful curmudgeon who has made a lifetime of bad decisions. He unexpectedly has a chance to make some of them right when his estranged son and grandson drop back into his life. A dramatization of the development of the atomic bom by the Manhattan Project, during World War II, with emphasis on the relationship between...