A memoir of the haunting and redemptive events of the acclaimed writer's life-the betrayal of a con-man father; a murder-suicide in his family's house; the presence of an oystercatcher-each one, as the saying goes, stranger than fiction As with many of us, the life of novelist Howard Norman has had its share of incidents of "arresting strangeness." Yet few of us connect these moments, as Norman has done in this spellbinding memoir, to show how life...

Presents an anthology of the best literary essays published in the past year, selected from American periodicals.