A lot of writers and readers would love to get inside the head of the former editor-in-chief or managing editor of (among others) Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, and Esquire, and get insight into the minds of many of the writers and friends who he has published, including Hunter S. Thompson, Tom McGuane, Edward Abbey, James Salter, Kurt Vonnegut, and Jim Harrison. Meet Terry McDonell in his  Accidental Life, an enlightening, fascinating and fun book-and you may do so in person when he comes to Off Square Books 

on September 20th at 5pm. -- RH

The Nix is a novel featuring Samuel Andreson-Anderson, who at age 11 is abandoned by his mother (telling him goodbye in the middle of the night she whispers not to worry), and never hears from or sees her again until 40 years later, when she appears on the nightly news for having thrown rocks at an arch-conservative could-be presidential candidate. Samuel becomes a frustrated college teacher who once got a huge advance on an unwritten novel based on one short story that got him proclaimed as a "best under 40," and, fifteen years later, he hasn't written a single word because, well, he's been too busy playing Elfquest on his computer. There's an important story element involving his mother and the 1968 Chicago riots, as well as Samuel's enduring obsession with the childhood girl-next-door, who, while he teeters on the brink, has become a world-renowned concert violinist.  The Nix is clever, ambitious, funny, big-hearted, and brilliantly written, and the anticipation of its publication very much reminds me of a time in 1978, just before  The World According to Garp was published. -- RH