In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on Mississippi's Gulf Coast, mostly retired architect Vaughn Williams, who is beset by the routine but no less troubling difficulties of late midlife, is doing what he can to remain, as he says, "viable." He scans the channels, reads newspapers and blogs online, Googles practically everything, teaches an occasional class at the local junior college, and worries perhaps overmuch about his late father.
When his ex-wife, Gail, is assaulted by her hot-tempered new boyfriend, she asks him and his landlady/girlfriend, Greta, to move in with her. Perhaps a little too cavalierly, they agree, and complications distinctly Barthelme-esque follow, including manly confrontations with the perp, lamentations of his father's life and death, casual moonlight drives, gambling for money, adults playing with trains, and the eventual untimely arrival of Vaughn's annoyingly successful younger brother, followed closely by Vaughn's ex-wife's invitation to remarry.
The tattered landscape of the post-hurricane Gulf Coast is the perfect analogue for these catastrophically out-of-order lives, and in this setting the players work into and out of almost all their troubles. In the process, and en route to a satisfying set of resolutions, Barthelme's acute eye and subtle wit uncover and autopsy an inner landscape of mortality, love, regret, and redemption. The result is his most emotionally resonant work of fiction yet--and a new reason to celebrate him as an American master.

Elroy Nights is a reasonably successful artist and professor, fifty-something, who is caught between the midlife crisis of his forties and the "eagerly anticipated sublime decay" of his sixties. Elroy and his wife, Clare, elect to try living separately, a choice characteristic of their relationship-fond, thoughtful, generous to a fault, and more than a little cracked. So Elroy leases a high-rise beach condo, begins hanging out with his twenty-something students, and experiences a splendid reenchantment with the world. With his trademark precision and pitch-perfect dialogue, Barthelme elegantly lays open this interweaving of twenty-year olds with their fifty-something fellow traveler. The result is a lovely, lilting romance, and a spare yet generous masterpiece from a writer at the top of his form.

"Double Down" is a true story, a terrifying roller-coaster ride deep into the heart of two men, and into the world of floating Gulf Coast casinos. When both of their parents died within a short time of each other, the writers Frederick and Steven Barthelme, both professors of English in Mississippi, inherited a goodly sum of money. What followed was a binge during which they gambled away their entire fortune-and more. And then, in a cruel twist of fate, they were charged with cheating at the tables.
Told with a mixture of sadness and wry humor, and with a compelling look at the physical aura of gambling-the feel of the cards, the smell of the crowd, the sounds of the tables-"Double Down" is a reflection on the lure of challenging the odds, the attraction of stepping into the void. A cautionary tale (the brothers were eventually exonerated), it is a book that, once read, will never be forgotten.

A chronicle of the divorces and recouplings of the author's own generation, Tracer is a terse, surrealistic, and moving portrait of life in America . Martin, in the middle of a divorce, is seeking solace. Flying off to the neon-lit south Florida coastline, he settles in for some rest and rehabilitation with his soon-to-be ex-sister-in-law. Martin quickly settles into her bed too, creating a situation that is bound for trouble-especially when his ex-wife also appears on the scene. Cautiously, the threesome try to sort things out, engaging in varied rituals of mating, hating, forgetting, and forgiving. A funny and unforgettable novel about friends, family, and the kind of quirky, complicated relationships that will keep readers rapt through the final pages.

Finally restored to print, Frederick Barthelme's classic novel about love, marriage, and one man's search for something more.. Peter Wexler is unhappy. He's forty and obsessed with what's wrong in the world, including his marriage, a "thirtysomething" version of Ozzie and Harriet. Deciding a change of scenery might help put his life back in order, Peter leaves his wonderful wife and their ten-year-old son in search of a resolution to the confusion, estrangement, fatigue, and adultery that have confounded his life.Natural Selection is an intimate novel about a man getting smart, and getting there a little later than he should have. It's caustic and subtle, slick and funny, charming, deeply melancholy, and more than anything else, true.

A New York Times Notable Book for 2000. The Law of Averages collects twenty-nine stories that rattle around in the fertile field of ordinary life in America; they embrace the plain, the drab, and the dull with the same warmth as the miraculous and exquisite. These sharp and touching stories strike at the heart of our time and reveal and reflect the sometimes funny, often bizarre details that routinely disrupt the delicate balance of our lives. This is a collection of ordinary, complex pleasures.