Is your face suffering from a lack of exercise? Readers rely on John McPherson's "Close to Home" cartoon to contort their facial muscles into an unstoppable grin each day. Not even Botox can stop you from smiling at this latest collection of "Close to Home."

How do you measure a cartoon's popularity? The true measure of a comic panel's popularity is how often it is posted on a refrigerator, cubicle, break room bulletin board, or office door. By that standard, "Close to Home" wins the comic panel popularity contest hands down.

"Close to Home" captures the humor in all facets of life. From home to hospitals, from classrooms to courtrooms, from boardrooms to backyards-there's a "Close to Home" panel that hits us where we live and work and play.

"A Million Little Pieces" of "Close to Home" features hilarious panels first published in newspapers in the year 2000, the year of the Y2K scare that never materialized. Of course, that's just the kind of thing you'd expect from a "Close to Home" world.

John McPherson's single-panel comics have appeared in 11 previous books. Nearly 600 daily and Sunday newspapers regularly carry his work, which has been syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate since 1992. A line of McPherson greeting cards, mugs, and calendars has sold well in the United States, and will soon expand to the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the European Union. Still, fans cannot get enough of Close to Home!Now comes Ferociously Close to Home. Like its predecessors, this 144-page volume delivers McPherson's trademark take on the absurdities of everyday life. To say that his solutions to these perplexing situations is 'out there' is an understatement. Consider Gina, who decides a branding iron will be the ideal memory aid for her birthday date-challenged husband. And poor Lanny, whose treadmill session is interrupted when he inadvertently triggers the health club's offensive odor alarm.McPherson has long walked the line between grotesque and goofy. But somehow, his figures with big noses and bulging eyes connect with readers with a surefire magnetic precision. Whether it's health care or parenting, dating or car repairs, Close to Home delivers McPherson's warped world without fail.