Personal essays share the author's adventures after buying a vacation house on the Carolina coast and his reflections on middle age and mortality.

The first advice I ever received about fishing was passed on by a teenage ranch hand when I was six years old. As often happened in those days, a spontaneous card party had erupted at the main ranch house one Sunday afternoon, and it was decided by the rancher that everyone should stay for dinner that evening. The fact that the ranch larder had little on hand to feed twenty or so people bothered the rancher not at all. He simply turned to one of the...

"For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work....

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Here is the beloved, bestselling author of I Feel Bad About My Neck at her funniest, wisest, and best, taking a hilarious look at the past and bemoaning the vicissitudes of modern life—and recalling with her signature clarity and wisdom everything she hasn’t (yet) forgotten.
In these pages she takes us from her first job in the mailroom at Newsweek to the six stages of email,...

With over two million copies of his works in print, Patrick McManus is an accomplished humor author. In The Bear in the Attic, he once again invites listeners to peek into his unique perspectives on life and his favorite topic, the great outdoors. Here listeners are treated to amazingly absurd tales of young male hijinks, camping mishaps and neighbor-eating bears! Norman Dietz adds another dimension to McManus' humor with his brilliant comic narration....

Published at the height of the 1980s self-help boom, Lost in the Cosmos is Percy's unforgettable riff on the trend that swept the nation. Filled with quizzes, essays, short stories, and diagrams, Lost in the Cosmos is a laugh-out-loud spin on a familiar genre that also pushes readers to serious contemplation of life's biggest questions.   One part parody and two parts philosophy, Lost in the Cosmos is an enlightening guide to the dilemmas of human...