Russo, Richard

"In this pair of novellas and two stories, Russo's characters bear little similarity to the blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from most of his novels. In "Horseman," a tenured professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches--"And after that, who knew?" In "Intervention," a realtor facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he presses forward, or not. In "Voice," a semi-retired English professor is conned by his increasingly estranged brother into coming along on a group tour of the Biennale, fleeing a mortifying incident with a traumatized student back in Massachusetts but encountering further complications en route. And in "Milton and Marcus," a lapsed novelist is struggling with his wife's illness and trying to rekindle his screenwriting career, only to be stymied by the pratfalls of that trade when he's called to an aging, iconic star's mountaintop in Wyoming"--Provided by publisher.

For two decades Ned is shuttled back and forth between his mother, Jenny, and his father, Sam, after Sam abandoned them and now Ned struggles to win his father's affection while avoiding his sins.

"Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is now staring down a VA cardiologist's estimate that he only has a year or two left, and he's busy as hell keeping the news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman he carried on with for years... the ultra-hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren't still best friends. Sully's son and grandson, for whom he was mostly an absentee figure. Doug Raymer, now Chief of Police and still obsessing over the identity of the man his wife might have been having an affair with before she died in a freak accident. Bath's mayor, the former academic Gus Moynihan, who also has a pressing wife problems and then there's Carl Roebuck, whose lifelong run of failing upwards might now come to ruin"--Provided by publisher.

A collection of six essays which celebrate the help of hospice workers at the end of an individual's life.

Writing professor William Henry Devereaux Jr. tries not to let the absurdities of academia get him down, but life becomes a bit hard to handle when he has his nose slashed by a feminist colleague, he is accused of murdering a goose, he suspects his wife of having an affair, and he confronts his long-lost father.

The lives of Jack and Joy Griffin always seem to come back to Cape Cod, where they honeymooned, as they experience the ups and downs of life, including the deaths of Jack's parents, the marriage of their daughter, and Jack and Joy's divorce.