Angelica's Grotto is a pornographic website into which 72-year-old art historian Harold Klein wanders one evening. Klein, a walking catalogue of infirmities, may not be up to much physically but there's a lot of sex going on in his head. His...
In Ariosto's epic 16th-century poem Orlando Furioso, the beautiful Angelica, chained, naked, to a rock and menaced by a sea monster is rescued by the valiant Ruggiero, riding a 'hippogriff', the offspring of a griffin and a mare — an entirely...
This wonderfully funny, refreshing, and compelling love story will grab readers from the moment they meet clueless Max Lesser, a children's book author and somewhat successful adult fiction writer who is suffering from a major case of writer's...
He climbs a ladder to reach another man's wife and gives himself up to her beauty, but then Pilgermann descends into a mob of peasants inspired by the Pope to shed the blood of Jews. Alone on the cobblestones, he cries out to Israel, to the Lord...
The turtles in London Zoo become the mutual obsession of two lonely strangers who dream of setting free the turtles and themselves. Detail by detail their diaries record a world in which thought leads to action and action brings William G. and...
Kleinzeit, Russell Hoban's second novel, is probably the funniest of his books. It's a stylized, completely unpredictable story about a man in search of reality, armed only with a Glockenspiel and a copy of Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War. The...
Jonathan Fitch was shocked by Mr. Rinyo-Clacton's offer a million pounds and one year to live, but what happened next was even more shocking. In a state of desperation after being left by beautiful Serafina, Jonathan does his best to pull up his...
Recently widowed and increasingly lonely, Roswell's life had arrived at the point when he felt he needed a tattoo. His ideal image was that of a bat featured on an 18th-century bowl in the Victoria and Albert Museum, but strangely, on a visit to...
A novel about a bloodthirsty cowgirl with hallucinogenic toadsucking properties, this is the story of Justine Trimble — a 1950s movie star — who is brought back to life in modern-day Soho. Problem is, she has a lust for blood, and when people...