"A good place to be from." That's how some people might characterize the Buckeye State. The writings in Good Roots: Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio, are testimony to the truth of that statement. By prominent writers such as P. J. O'Rourke, Susan Orlean, and Alix Kates Shulman, these contributions are alternately nostalgic, irreverent, and sincere, and offer us a personal sense of place. Their childhoods are as varied as their work. Some were raised in urban Cleveland, Akron, and Cincinnati, others in the small Ohio towns that typify the Midwest, and still others in the countryside. Yet what they have to tell us about their roots resonates with a shared heritage, a sense of what is universal and enduring about growing up in the heartland. Their collective resume reads like a literary Who's Who, including four Pulitzer Prizes, several National Book Awards, and many prestigious fellowships. Good Roots is also plain good reading from some of our country's most accomplished contemporary writers. Contributors include: Jill Bialosky, Dan Cryer, Michael Dirda, Elizabeth Dodd, Anthony Doerr, Rita Dove, Ian Frazier, Dale Keiger, Andrea Louie, Kathleen Dean Moore, Mary Oliver, Susan Orlean, P. J. O'Rourke, Julie Salamon, Scott Russell Sanders, Alix Kates Shulman, Jeffery Smith, James Toedtman, and Mark Winegardner.

Jake Winroy had no looks, no education, and little else before he'd worked his way to the top of a million-dollar-a-month horse-betting ring. But when the state's latched onto his game, the feds take a bite and the lawyer fees eat away at the rest, all Jake's got left is the bottle and a beautiful wife whose every word is ugly.
Jake's to be the top witness in a major case against organized crime--if he hasn't already kicked the bucket before the trial has its day in court. But an enigmatic mafioso known only as The Man has a plan to make dead certain Jake never gets the chance to testify.
The Man's hired Charlie Little Bigger, a hit man barely five feet tall, to infiltrate the Winroy residence as a tenant and murder Winroy in cold blood. To Little, it seems like the easiest job on Earth. Until he lays eyes on the beautiful and dangerous Fay and the Winroy's young housemaid Ruth, a woman as sensual as she is vulnerable. SAVAGE NIGHT is Jim Thompson at his most unpredictable and deeply suspenseful, in a claustrophobic thriller of one man's fractured mind.

THE MISSING YEARS FROM THE GREATEST CRIME SAGA OF ALL TIME
Thirty-five years ago, Mario Puzo's great American tale, "The Godfather," was published, and popular culture was indelibly changed. Now, in "The Godfather Returns," acclaimed novelist Mark Winegardner continues the story-the years not covered in Puzo's bestselling book or in Francis Ford Coppola's classic films.
It is 1955. Michael Corleone has won a bloody victory in the war among New York's crime families. Now he wants to consolidate his power, save his marriage, and take his family into legitimate businesses. To do so, he must confront his most dangerous adversary yet, Nick Geraci, a former boxer who worked his way through law school as a Corleone street enforcer, and who is every bit as deadly and cunning as Michael. Their personal cold war will run from 1955 to 1962, exerting immense influence on the lives of America's most powerful criminals and their loved ones, including
Tom Hagen, the Corleone Family's lawyer and consigliere, who embarks on a political career in Nevada while trying to protect his brother;
Francesca Corleone, daughter of Michael's late brother Sonny, who is suddenly learning her family's true history and faces a difficult choice;
Don Louie Russo, head of the Chicago mob, who plays dumb but has wily ambitions for muscling in on the Corleones' territory;
Peter Clemenza, the stalwart Corleone underboss, who knows more Family secrets than almost anyone;
Ambassador M. Corbett Shea, a former Prohibition-era bootlegger and business ally of the Corleones', who wants to get his son elected to the presidency-and needs some help from his old friends;
Johnny Fontane, the world's greatest saloon singer, who ascends to new heights as a recording artist, cozying up to Washington's power elite and maintaining a precarious relationship with notorious underworld figures;
Kay Adams Corleone, who finally discovers the truth about her husband, Michael-and must decide what it means for their marriage and their children and
Fredo Corleone, whose death has never been fully explained until now, and whose betrayal of the Family was part of a larger and more sinister chain of events.
Sweeping from New York and Washington to Las Vegas and Cuba, "The Godfather Returns "is the spellbinding story of America's criminal underworld at mid-century and its intersection with the political, legal, and entertainment empires. Mark Winegardner brings an original voice and vision to Mario Puzo's mythic characters while creating several equally unforgettable characters of his own. "The Godfather Returns "stands on its own as a triumph-in a tale about what we love, yearn for, and sometimes have reason to fear . . . family.

"From the Hardcover edition."

It is 1963 in New York, and things have never been better for the Corleones. They've taken out their Mafia rivals, and legitimised the Family. Outside the fortified building owned by Michael Corleone, newly undisputed Boss of Bosses, a parade of people - among them former mob rivals and an emissary from the Mayor of New York - wait to ask the great man for favours. Only one thing remains to be done. Traitorous former Corleone capo Nick Geraci has powerful friends and far too much to say, and needs to be brought in. But then everything changes. As fireworks explode over First Avenue, news arrives that Jimmy Shea, President of the United States and an old friend of the Corleone's, has been assassinated...

From Paul Auster on a Provencal onion tart to Lorrie Moore on a Chinese take-out Christmas dinner, these delectable essays by well-known american writers explore the meaning of food in our lives and our culture. With contributions by Julia Alvarez, Madison Smartt Bell, Gish Jen, Bobby Ann Mason, Richard Russo, Lee Smith, and many others.

The sequel, authorised by Mario Puzo's Estate, to the bestselling The Godfather. 'The bloody victory of the Corleone Family was not complete, ' begins the final chapter of Mario Puzo's The Godfather, 'until a year of delicate manoeuvring established Michael Corleone as the most powerful Family chief in the United States.' The Godfather: The Lost Years takes place in the years 1955-65, but it is built upon the story of that 'year of delicate political manoeuvring' - and how, in winning the battle of that year, Michael Corleone set the stage to lose the war: the war to make the Family legitimate, the war to keep the Corleones supremely in power, the war to stay true to his father's wishes, the war to give not just his Family but his family a safe and happy life. The Godfather: The Lost Years is not just a sequel. A magnificent novel in its own right, by an acclaimed young American novelist, it traces the nexus of ambitious, audacious decisions that Michael Corleone implements, their ultimate failure, and, after the Family's literal and figurative years in the wilderness (of Las Vegas), Michael's literal, physical return to New York, and his attempts to regain control there

The proprietor of a bowling alley whose artist daughter paints only phalluses. A ninth-grade girl who marries in haste only to be faced with her husband's impotence. A libidinous poet who learns the meaning of harassment. The life and loves of a professional lawn-mower. These are just a few of the distinctive stories that make up Mark Winegardner's remarkable debut short-story collection.
Winegardner, whose rich and epic novel Crooked River Burning gave the much-maligned city of Cleveland a fresh and vibrant aspect, now returns to the Midwest that he knows so intimately and casts a piercingly compassionate eye on its denizens. The result is a kaleidoscopic picture of a people who are arrogant and humble, faithful and disloyal, driven and floundering-a people who are finally, America itself.

The critically acclaimed novel of a compelling love affair and the decline of a once prosperous city .
The birthplace of rock 'n' roll, Cleveland was an economic powerhouse and America's sixth-largest city in the late 1940s. By 1969, it had dropped to twelfth. In the summer of 1948, fourteen-year-old David Zielinsky can look forward to a job at the docks, the only way to make a living on his side of the city. Across the river is twelve-year-old Anne O'Connor, daughter of the reigning political boss of Cuyahoga County. In this richly entertaining novel, the two will meet and fall in love, and for twenty turbulent years, as Cleveland falls from grace, they will be consumed by a fiery, star-crossed romance. A natural-born storyteller, Mark Winegardner charts the demise of this fascinating city, artfully weaving in such real-life Clevelanders as Eliot Ness, Alan Freed, and Carl Stokes. A saga reminiscent of the best writing of E. L. Doctorow, Tom Wolfe, and John Dos Passos, Crooked River Burning is masterfully crafted and vastly entertaining-a great American novel in the truest sense.