From the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections, a darkly comedic novel about family Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul - the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's...

A town boy sent to live on a remote wilderness farm forms a friendship with an elderly, disfigured man who teaches him many things.

A funny, clear-eyed view of the realities of teenage love from National Book Award winner Pete Hautman. Jen and Wes do not "meet cute." They do not fall in love at first sight. They do not swoon with scorching desire. They do not believe that they are instant soul mates destined to be together forever. This is not that kind of love story. Instead, they just hang around in each other's orbits...until eventually they collide. And even after that...

Excerpts from the diary of William Bircher, a fifteen-year-old Minnesotan who was a drummer during the Civil War. Supplemented by sidebars, activities, and a timeline of the era.