Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

The Brothers’ Lot

The Brothers’ Lot

Kevin Holohan

Combining the spirit of Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim with a bawdy evisceration of hypocrisy in old-school Catholic education, The Brothers’ Lot is a comic satire that tells the story of the Brothers of Godly Coercion School for Young Boys of Meager Means……

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Tom Robbins

Switters is a contradiction for all seasons: an anarchist who works for the government, a pacifist who carries a gun, a vegetarian who sops up ham gravy. Yet there is nothing limp about Switters. He doesn’t merely pack a pistol. He is a pistol. As we follow Switters across four continents Robbins explores, challenges and celebrates…

Jew

Jew

D. O. Dodd

A man regains consciousness to find himself naked in a mass grave, with no idea who he is. His thought is survival, but in a religious war survival depends on knowing which side you are on….

B is For Beer

B is For Beer

Tom Robbins

Have you ever wondered why your daddy likes beer so much? Have you wondered, before you fall asleep at night, why he sometimes acts kind of “funny” after he’s been drinking beer? Maybe you’ve even wondered where beer comes from, because you’re pretty sure it isn’t from a cow. Well, Gracie Perkel wondered those same things….

Little Boy Blue

Little Boy Blue

Edward Bunker

Young Alex Hamilton is intelligent and independent but given to sudden fits of violent rage. Rebellious since his parents split up, Alex is constantly absconding from foster homes and institutions to be with his father, a broken man who can’t give his son the home he desperately needs….

Villa Incognito

Villa Incognito

Tom Robbins

Imagine there are American MIAs who chose to remain missing after Vietnam. Imagine there is a family in which generations of strong women have shared a connection to an outlandish figure from Japanese folklore. Imagine just those things (don’t even try to imagine the love story) and you’ll have a foretaste of Tom Robbins’s beautifully crafted novel

Another Roadside Attraction

Another Roadside Attraction

Tom Robbins

What if the Second Coming didn’t quite come off as advertised? What if “the Corpse” on display in that funky roadside zoo is really who they say it is – what does that portend for the future of western civilization? And what if a young clairvoyant named Amanda re-establishes the flea circus as popular entertainment and fertility worship…

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Tom Robbins

When the stock market crashes on the Thursday before Easter, you – an ambitious, although ineffectual and not entirely ethical young broker – are convinced you’re facing the Weekend from Hell. Before the market reopens on Monday, you’re going to have to scramble and scheme to cover your butt, but there’s no way you can anticipate the…

Skinny Legs and All

Skinny Legs and All

Tom Robbins

An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations…. It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it’s the axis around which this gutsy, fun-loving, and alarmingly provocative novel spins, in which a bean can philosophizes, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art…

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Tom Robbins

Starring Sissy Hanshaw-flawlessly beautiful, almost. A small-town girl with big-time dreams and a quirk to match-hitchhiking her way into your heart, your hopes, and your sleeping bags… Featuring Bonanza Jellybean and the smooth-riding cowgirls of Rubber Rose Ranch. Chink; a lascivious guru of yams and yang. Julian; a Mohawk by birth;…

Still Life with Woodpecker: A Surreal Love Story from the Master of American Counterculture

Still Life with Woodpecker: A Surreal Love Story from the Master of American Counterculture

Tom Robbins

Still Life with Woodpecker is sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes….

Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume

Tom Robbins

Jitterbug Perfume is an epic. Which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn’t conclude until nine o’clock tonight [Paris time]….