From the award-winning author of Paradise Boys, Scotch and Oranges, Ghost Dancer, and End of the Road, comes the startling, visionary The Oakland Quartet. Set in Oakland, a working-class American-Irish neighborhood of steel mills and saloons, the novel, set in 1958, chronicles four teenaged baseball players -- Stash and Nig, Mongol and Whitey, the slickest-fielding infield the city had ever seen -- who, on a hot, sulfurous night, commit an unspeakable crime -- and must live with its consequences. Supported by a stellar cast of barkeeps, city councilmen, neighborhood enforcers, and Catholic priests -- as well as such historic figures as Mayor David Lawrence, baseball Hall of Famer Pie Traynor, and many more -- the Oakland Quartet make a decision that will ultimately ruin their lives. Narrated by Beef, their former teammate and catcher, The Oakland Quartet closely examines these small, stunted lives -- while their priest, Father David Reddy, searches to save those who have who have lost their way.

With stirring narrative and beautiful photography, Pittsburgh Prays takes us on a journey to the massive cathedrals and private chapels, synagogues, mosques and temples of Greater Pittsburgh. The book highlights not only sacred places, and piety, but also the love that created and maintains these houses of worships of all faiths, foci of communities and neighborhoods. More than bricks and mortar, each building represents the lexicon of Pittsburgh history - and generations dedicated to the greater good.

From the award-winning author of "Paradise Boys, Scotch and Oranges," and "Ghost Dancer," comes "End of the Road," Americans fighting their fates, striving to succeed.

In the multi-layered, multi-nuanced narratives that readers have come expect in the Mendelson landscape, San Francisco reporter Damian Vrabel goes off looking for America. Returning with 36 tightly written short stories-each exactly 1,000 words-Vrabel chronicles departure and disappointment, betrayal and bereavement. Traveling the length and breadth of the continent, its heartland and its edges-San Diego and Alaska, Key West and Peggy's Cove, even Paris and Prague-Vrabel encounters terminal patients, shell-shocked soldiers, and ex-convicts; the troubled, lost, and bewildered. Witnessing every person's loss, Vrabel helps each to articulate a sad epiphany. Subtitled American Elegies, the book shares it tales of failure-while discovering hope in all of us. As Vrabel-and his readers-look to re-discover the American Dream, they find instead the "End of the Road."

From the award-winning author of "Paradise Boys" and "Scotch and Oranges " comes "Ghost Dancer," 21 original stories that look at American life with a reporter's eye-and dissect it with a surgeon's scalpel.

From a young man grappling with the Kennedy assassination to a battle-weary Vietnam flyer, a ship's officer off Tierra del Fuego to a homesick soldier in war-torn France, we meet recovering alcoholics, aspiring actors, pimps and pols and busted-up football players-people who try to rebuild shattered lives on a landscape scarred by war, littered with fatal fires and shuttered steel mills, populated by dying sweethearts and unfaithful brides.

In the tour-de-force title story, a young Lakota travels back in time to perform the Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee. Mendocino to Boston, Broadway to the French Quarter, "Ghost Dancer" spans the Twentieth Century, and the globe, showing us the choices we make-and the consequences we face.

"Paradise Boys" is narrated by JoJo Arnold, a violent, angry 16-year-old boy who is spending a summer in a minimum-security institution for emotionally disturbed adolescents. In a racially mixed dormitory wing, he lives with nine other troubled teens who have a variety of problems.

The Paradise Boys live in a place which takes its name from its location, Paradise Hill, on the city's North Side. Surrounded by hostile neighbors, who call the boys criminals and retards, and on set a hill above an urban jungle called the War Streets, the Paradise Boys grapple with the confusions of life. Playing softball, going canoeing, traveling to amusement parks, the boys also take drugs, fight, and cope with parents, guilt, and their own troubled pasts. Facing an endless struggle with each other --and within themselves-- the Paradise Boys fight with the world until the novel's violent and shocking conclusion.

"Scotch and Oranges," is a contemporary novel about Ned Humber, a 25-year-old advertising executive who has affairs with seven women, from 19 to 53, including a teenage flirt, Eastern European refugee, African-American writer, actress/stripper, middle-aged burnout, 53-year-old virgin/Irish patriot, and a lesbian.

Telling the heartbreaking story of each woman, "Scotch and Oranges" also chronicles Ned's growth from callow and selfish to caring and sensitive. After seven very different and affecting experiences, Ned not only becomes a kinder, gentler leader, asserting himself for the good of the agency, but also expresses profound regret for the way that he has not sufficiently appreciated all his incredibly diverse women.