Thomas Berger’s debut novel of a young man tumultuously coming of age in postwar Germany. Carlo Reinhart, a young American army medic stationed in Germany, confronts a disturbing new world following the end of World War II. Living in Berlin, a city fractured into barricaded sectors by the occupying powers, Reinhart begins to drive himself mad with memories of the evils he has witnessed and questions about how the atrocities took place. When he meets an idealistic Jew named Nathan Schild, Reinhart’s turmoil grows more acute. Schild works for both the Americans and the Russians, and he becomes a flashpoint for Reinhart’s anguish over the world’s vast contradictions. When Schild’s escapades lead to a powerful turning point, Reinhart is forced to come to terms with life’s ambiguities as well as with his own evolving identity. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Thomas Berger including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

“The truth is always made up of little particulars which sound ridiculous when repeated.” So says Jack Crabb, the 111-year-old narrator of Thomas Berger’s 1964 masterpiece of American fiction, Little Big Man. Berger claimed the Western as serious literature with this savage and epic account of one man’s extraordinary double life. After surviving the massacre of his pioneer family, ten-year-old Jack is adopted by an Indian chief who nicknames him Little Big Man. As a Cheyenne, he feasts on dog, loves four wives, and sees his people butchered by horse soldiers commanded by General George Armstrong Custer. Later, living as a white man once more, he hunts the buffalo to near-extinction, tangles with Wyatt Earp, cheats Wild Bill Hickok, and fights in the Battle of Little Bighorn alongside Custer himself—a man he’d sworn to kill. Hailed by The Nation as “a seminal event,” Little Big Man is a singular literary achievement that, like its hero, only gets better with age. Praise for *Little Big Man  * “An epic such as Mark Twain might have given us.”—Henry Miller “The very best novel ever about the American West.”—The New York Times Book Review “Spellbinding . . . [Crabb] surely must be one of the most delightfully absurd fictional fossils ever unearthed.”—Time “Superb . . . Berger’s success in capturing the points of view and emotional atmosphere of a vanished era is uncanny. His skill in characterization, his narrative power and his somewhat cynical humor are all outstanding.”—*The New York Times*  From the Trade Paperback edition.

A collection of the many short stories that Gerber published in Redbook Magazine over the years.

This shattering novel about wife and child abuse is a work of art that haunts the reader's memory. Merrill Joan Gerber reveals the love affair of Ginny and her sensitive but horribly destructive lover, Michael. The pair adopts a child that Michael both loves and abuses.

A mirror of manners, the book is also a meditation on the languages rich, ludicrous, exact, and also American in which we try to grasp the world we're in. Along the kindred axes of separation and intimacy Women and Men extends the great line of twentieth-century innovative fiction.

Killing Time is a psychological novel about crime. The hero, Joseph Detweiler, is the world’s most courteous, sensitive, sincere, and likable killer. He is even innocent of the fact that a crime has been committed. This tough and bizarre story breaks all the rules. It is not a whodunit, because the killer is already known. It is not a detective story or a sociological treatise on crime, because it is told from the point of view of the criminal.

Chuck Burgoyne is no ordinary houseguest. The Graveses (father Doug; wife Audrey; son Bobby; and daughter-in-law Lydia) have gotten used to his polite manners and gourmet breakfasts. But one morning at the Graveses' summer home, Chuck fails to appear. When Chuck finally does surface, he is no longer sweet and charming, but rather has become aggressive and arrogant, abusing each family member in turn. Each family member that is, except the fellow outsider, Lydia. Once Chuck rescues her from the dangerous undertow of the ocean, Lydia can't help but feel obligated to him, even after his uninvited advances to her while she's half asleep. Slowly it becomes apparent to the family that Chuck isn't anyone's guest but rather a perfect stranger who wormed his way into their home. Yet the Graveses are so concerned with not offending him by being impolite that they willingly accept the abuse he freely dishes out. In private, however, they all scheme for his undoing. But will anyone muster up the courage? An eerie and clever novel, The Houseguest introduces one of Berger's most dangerous and compelling villains.

"Meeting Evil "tells an adrenaline-pumped, genuinely frightening tale of malevolence that swerves swiftly and irrevocably to a catastrophic climax. John Felton meets evil late one Monday morning when the doorbell rings. Standing on the front porch is a stranger. He wears expensive running shoes and a baseball cap and calls himself Richie. He tells John his car has stalled and asks for help. An altercation at the gas station leads to a shocking crime as violence begets violence. At the end of this harrowing day, John returns home to find Richie ensconced in his living room, chatting up his wife. The evil has somehow seeped into his life. Thus begins the transformation of an unremarkable husband and father of two into a desperate man willing to go to any length to protect his family from the darkness that threatens them. This is an extraordinary masterpiece and a chilling portrait of mounting menace played out against an everyday world of domestic routine, personified in a protagonist of basic decency grappling with both the immediate and existential meaning of true evil. Now a major motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson and Luke Wilson.

Suburban regular guy Earl Keese confronts the yawning pit of chaos in the persons of Harry and Ramona, a younger couple who have just moved into the only other house on their dead-end street. Literally overnight, Earl's painstakingly controlled world is turned upside down. Soon he is engaged in guerilla warfare with his new neighbors, who seem to threaten the very fabric of his carefully constructed reality.

A dozen remarkable short stories from the author of Little Big Man, offering an absurdist journey through the mind of one of America’s great storytellers Thomas Berger’s first short story collection in almost thirty years showcases the author’s acclaimed wit, intellect, and emotional sureness. His pages teem with larger-than-life characters: Dr. Poon, a Hollywood snake handler in way over his head during a film shoot in Southeast Asia; Charlie, an apartment superintendent who finds a peculiarly powerful plastic pistol; and Vernon, the confused owner of a talking puppy. No matter where Berger takes his readers, his world is full of oddities. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Thomas Berger including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection. 

The time is the 1930s. Buddy Sandifer, dressed in his natty white flannels, baby-blue shirt, striped tie, tan-and-white shoes, and coconut-straw hat with polka-dot band, is falling into one of his moods. Owner of a used-car lot and father of a fifteen-year-old son with a penchant for sex manuals, Buddy has decided to murder his wife and marry his mistress, Laverne, a robust blonde who cooks his favorite meal of fried pork chops, fried potatoes, and fried apples while wearing a short pink apron over black-lace step-ins and brassiere, long-gartered silk stockings, and platform shoes. The only problem is how to arrange the crime.

A bitterly comic novel of middle-aged angst and middle-class American life in the 1960s, by the acclaimed author of *Little Big Man* It is the late sixties in suburbia, and Carlo Reinhart’s life is a mess. He’s fat, broke, middle aged, and unemployed. His anarchist son hates him, and his wife has taken a younger lover and thrown Carlo out of the house. In fact, the only one who doesn’t consider him contemptible and ridiculous seems to be Carlo’s adoring, overweight daughter, who is almost as pathetic as he is. Even his affair with a twenty-two-year-old nymphomaniac is strangely unsatisfying. Then, just as he’s reaching his lowest point, the self-styled Ultimate Human Irrelevancy is offered a golden opportunity to grab a piece of the American Dream, thanks to the reappearance of his old school chum Bob Sweet. Bob, who has a gift for success, is inviting Reinhart to get in on the ground floor of his latest venture: cryonics. But while Carlo loves the taste of the good life that his friend has suddenly provided, he’s not quite certain whether Sweet wants him as a partner . . . or as a human popsicle. The third novel in Thomas Berger’s acclaimed Carlo Reinhart Series, Vital Parts is a stingingly hilarious swipe at twentieth-century culture and mores. Unrestrained and unapologetic, it is a tour de force from a master satirist that stands alongside Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, and the novels of Kurt Vonnegut as a trenchant and funny comment on American life.

Detective Russel Wren takes a case in what just might be the oddest country on earth A phone call warning of a bomb threat is all Detective Russel Wren needs to get out the door. He makes it to the next block before an enormous explosion destroys his entire building. Without his Manhattan office, Wren finds himself forced to accept a strange mission to the tiny central European nation of Saint Sebastian.  Saint Sebastian is unlike any country Wren has ever seen, and as his stay there continues, its oddities merely multiply: blond-haired citizens are consigned to the underclass; rudeness is a capital crime; and the Ministry of Clams is the go-to for any problem that can’t be solved by the Ministries of Hoaxes, Disaffection, Irony, or Allergies. No matter where Wren finds himself, he stumbles upon something puzzling, hilarious, and extraordinary—all leading up to a stunning turn of events. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Thomas Berger including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

The acclaimed author of Little Big Man is at his most unusual in this retelling of the Greek Oresteia trilogy through the lives of a seemingly ordinary small-town American family. When a returning WWII hero is murdered by his adulterous wife and her lover, his son Orrie slays them both in this darkly intriguing and mysterious work.

With the humor, irony, and veteran storytelling that have made him one of America’s most respected novelists, Thomas Berger has written a modern-day Robinson Crusoe.