In exile from his home country of Peru, Ricardo Funes embodies the ultimate starving artist. Fired from almost every job he's held--usually for paying more attention to literature than work--he sets himself up in a rundown shack where he works on writing stories to enter in regional contests across Spain, and foisting his judgments about literature on anyone who will listen as one of the last remaining members of the "negacionismo" poetry movement....

A rollicking extravaganza on Ruth Puttermesser, a woman lawyer who with the help of a genie becomes mayor of New York. Her real ambition, however, is to be a mother, but for that she has to wait until she is murdered and goes to heaven, where she meets the child's father. By the author of The Shawl.

Told from the perspective of precocious fourteen-year-old Peter, 'The Elephant Keepers' Children' is about three siblings and how they deal with life alongside their eccentric parents. Peter's father is a vicar, his mother an artisan, and both are equally and profoundly devout. The family lives on the fictional island of Fino, where people of all faiths coexist peacefully. Yet nothing is at it seems.