BEGINNER'S GREEK By James Collins (Little, Brown) FICTION
They embraced. The kiss lasted a long time. Peter’s first emotion was faint irritation with the way Charlotte kissed. She didn’t push her lips out enough or something. Then he immediately began to think that he had made a tremendous mistake, and he wanted desperately to take back the words he had said a few moments before. Then he thought:
It’ll be okay. It’ll be fine. I do love Charlotte, really.…Parallel to his fundamental disappointment, he also felt something like a thrill. He had just made a marriage proposal, and he had held this woman unclothed in his arms countless times. He knew the flaws in her body, her bony hips.
A first novel from a former investment banker balances work and play in a tightly plotted, closely observed romantic comedy about a trader named Peter Russell, who strikes up a conversation with a brainy strawberry blonde on an airplane.
A FRACTION OF THE WHOLE By Steve Toltz (Spiegel & Grau) FICTION
Now Terry was kneeling down in the middle of the last lane, gun in his hand, using four hostages as a human shield. Police were positioned at every point of the bowling alley; you could even see the black nozzle of a sniper’s rifle poking out between the pins.…
There was frantic whispering over at the human shield. Suddenly they started to move. They edged over to the bowling ball racks, then back to the edge of the lane. There it went! A ball flew down the center of the lane. Terry was bowling. The policemen’s eyes watched the ball fly toward the pins. There was a profound silence that verged on the religious. A strike! Terry had done it! He took out all ten pins!
A dazzling literary debut from Australia combines the hilarious high-low reference points of early Martin Amis with the annihilating punk inventiveness of Chuck Palahniuk.
THINGS I'VE LEARNED FROM WOMEN WHO'VE DUMPED ME Edited by Ben Karlin (Grand Central) NONFICTION
For a few days we enjoyed something resembling romantic bliss. But, as I soon learned, it would be the roller-coaster style. The kind that makes you puke. I helped her move—not to L.A., where I lived, but to Chicago. On the drive, we went into further detail about each other’s sexual exploits during our time away from each other. My part was easy. Zero sexual exploits. “And you? What’s that? More baths?” What is it with her and bathing with dudes? Now I got really angry.… I told her I would pay any amount of money to escape this nightmare. (This was not true. In my mind I had decided I would spend no more than $600 for a ticket.)
Former editor of The Onion
and executive producer of The Daily Show
, Ben Karlin (who wrote this excerpt) gathers brief, wincingly funny essays from writers such as Dan Savage and Stephen Colbert about being shown the door.
BEGINNER'S GREEK
