The Abstinence Teacher
The Abstinence Teacher

Author: Tom Perrotta

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2007-10-16

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 1429921382

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The Abstinence Teacher illuminates the powerful emotions that run beneath the placid surface of modern American family life, and explores the complicated spiritual and sexual lives of ordinary people. It is elegantly and simply written, characterized by the distinctive mix of satire and compassion that has become Tom Perrotta's trademark. Stonewood Heights is the perfect place to raise children: it's got good schools, solid values and a healthy real estate market. Parents in the town are involved in their children's lives, and often in other children's lives, too—coaching sports, driving carpool, focusing on enriching experiences. Ruth Ramsey is the high school human sexuality teacher whose openness is not appreciated by all her students—or their parents. Her daughter's soccer coach is Tim Mason, a former stoner and rocker whose response to hitting rock bottom was to reach out and be saved. Tim's introduction of Christianity on the playing field horrifies Ruth, while his evangelical church sees a useful target in the loose-lipped sex ed teacher. But when these two adversaries in a small-town culture war actually talk to each other, a surprising friendship begins to develop. "Perrotta is that rare combination: a satirist with heart....Those who haven't curled up on the couch with this writer's books are missing a very great pleasure."—Seattle Times "Tom Perrotta is a truth-telling, unshowy chronicler of modern-day America."—The NewYork Times Book Review (in a front-page review)

The Leftovers
The Leftovers

Author: Tom Perrotta

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2011-08-30

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1429989130

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With heart, intelligence and a rare ability to illuminate the struggles inherent in ordinary lives, Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers—now adapted into an HBO series—is a startling, thought-provoking novel about love, connection and loss. What if—whoosh, right now, with no explanation—a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down? That's what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened—not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children. Kevin Garvey, Mapleton's new mayor, wants to speed up the healing process, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized community. Kevin's own family has fallen apart in the wake of the disaster: his wife, Laurie, has left to join the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence; his son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a sketchy prophet named Holy Wayne. Only Kevin's teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she's definitely not the sweet "A" student she used to be. Kevin wants to help her, but he's distracted by his growing relationship with Nora Durst, a woman who lost her entire family on October 14th and is still reeling from the tragedy, even as she struggles to move beyond it and make a new start. A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book for 2011 A USA Today 10 Books We Loved Reading in 2011 Title One of NPR's 10 Best Novels of 2011

Little Children
Little Children

Author: Tom Perrotta

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2007-04-01

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 1429907827

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Unexpectedly suspenseful, but written with all the fluency and dark humor of Tom Perrotta's The Wishbones and Joe College, Little Children exposes the adult dramas unfolding amidst the swingsets and slides of an ordinary American playground. Tom Perrotta's thirty-ish parents of young children are a varied and surprising bunch. There's Todd, the handsome stay-at-home dad dubbed "The Prom King" by the moms of the playground; Sarah, a lapsed feminist with a bisexual past, who seems to have stumbled into a traditional marriage; Richard, Sarah's husband, who has found himself more and more involved with a fantasy life on the internet than with the flesh and blood in his own house; and Mary Ann, who thinks she has it all figured out, down to scheduling a weekly roll in the hay with her husband, every Tuesday at 9pm. They all raise their kids in the kind of sleepy American suburb where nothing ever seems to happen--at least until one eventful summer, when a convicted child molester moves back to town, and two restless parents begin an affair that goes further than either of them could have imagined. Perrotta received Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for best screenplay for the film adaptation of Little Children, which was directed by Todd Field and starred Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly.

Bad Haircut
Bad Haircut

Author: Tom Perrotta

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2012-12-11

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1250017424

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From the New York Times–bestselling author of The Leftovers: “Darkly tender, simply written tales about growing up in the Garden State in the 1970s.” —The New York Times Book Review The ten rich stories here span from 1969 to 1980 and are linked by a single protagonist: Buddy, an adolescent suburban New Jersey boy who is truly seeing his world for the first time and already finding it both mysterious and lacking. Whether he’s discovering that his mother actually knows—and has a history with—the man inside the battered foam hot dog costume; feeling the first glimmer that sex might actually be possible for him; or finding himself swept along on a prank gone very wrong, Buddy is a recognizable and relatable American boy in this collection by the author of Tracy Flick Can’t Win, Mrs. Fletcher, and The Abstinence Teacher, among other novels. Bad Haircut explores the themes that have fascinated Perrotta throughout his career: suburban rituals and mores; sports and religion; the cheerful cheesiness of American consumer life; public tests of manliness; and the moral dilemmas faced by ordinary people, parents, and teenagers alike. “So sharp and sure in its description of growing up . . . Because this set of stories, like those of J.D. Salinger, are so based in the kind of truth that spans generations, no reference to a particular decade is needed.” —Hartford Courant “More powerful than any coming-of-age novel I’ve read recently.” —The Washington Post “[These] well-made, unpretentious stories are as tight as brick bungalows, plain and serviceable on the outside, radiant within, full of life’s sorrow and wonder.” —Booklist

Tracy Flick Can't Win
Tracy Flick Can't Win

Author: Tom Perrotta

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-06-07

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1501144081

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Soon to be a major motion picture starring Reese Witherspoon “Tom Perrotta is…one of the great writers that we have today. I love this book.” —Harlan Coben An “engrossing and mordantly funny” (People) novel about ambition, coming-of-age in adulthood, and never really leaving high school politics behind—featuring New York Times bestselling author Tom Perrotta’s most iconic character of all time. Tracy Flick is a hardworking assistant principal at a public high school in suburban New Jersey. Still ambitious but feeling a little stuck and underappreciated in midlife, Tracy gets a jolt of good news when the longtime principal, Jack Weede, abruptly announces his retirement, creating a rare opportunity for Tracy to ascend to the top job. Energized by the prospect of her long-overdue promotion, Tracy throws herself into her work with renewed zeal, determined to prove her worth to the students, faculty, and School Board, while also managing her personal life—a ten-year-old daughter, a needy doctor boyfriend, and a burgeoning meditation practice. But nothing ever comes easily to Tracy Flick, no matter how diligent or qualified she happens to be. Her male colleagues’ determination to honor Vito Falcone—a star quarterback of dubious character who had a brief, undistinguished career in the NFL—triggers memories for Tracy and leads her to reflect on the trajectory of her own life. As she considers the past, Tracy becomes aware of storm clouds brewing in the present. Is she really a shoo-in for the principal job? Is the Superintendent plotting against her? Why is the School Board President’s wife trying so hard to be her friend? And why can’t she ever get what she deserves? A sharp, darkly comic, and pitch-perfect chronicle of the second act of one of the most memorable characters of our time, Tracy Flick Can’t Win “delivers acerbic insight about frustrated ambition” (Esquire).

Nine Inches
Nine Inches

Author: Tom Perrotta

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2013-09-10

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1250034701

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A collection of stories focuses on suburban nuclear families, including "Senior Season," "Nine Inches" and "The Smile on Happy Chang's Face."

Joe College
Joe College

Author: Tom Perrotta

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2006-09-19

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1429907800

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Joe College is Tom Perrotta's warmest and funniest fiction yet, a comic journey into the dark side of love, higher education and food service. For many college students, Spring Break means fun and sun in Florida. For Danny, a Yale junior, it means two weeks behind the wheel of the Roach Coach, his father's lunch truck, which plies the parking lots of office parks in central New Jersey. But Danny can use the time behind the coffee urn to try and make sense of a love life that's gotten a little complicated. There's loyal and patient hometown honey Cindy and her recently dropped bombshell to contend with. And there's also lissome Polly back in New Haven--with her shifting moods, perfect thrift store dresses and inconvenient liaison with a dashing professor. If girl problems aren't enough, there's the constant menace of the Lunch Monsters, a group of thugs who think Danny has planted the Roach Coach in their territory.

I'm Down
I'm Down

Author: Mishna Wolff

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2009-05-26

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 142998290X

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Mishna Wolff grew up in a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black. "He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esqe sweater, gold chains and a Kangol—telling jokes like Redd Fox, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. You couldn't tell my father he was white. Believe me, I tried," writes Wolff. And so from early childhood on, her father began his crusade to make his white daughter Down. Unfortunately, Mishna didn't quite fit in with the neighborhood kids: she couldn't dance, she couldn't sing, she couldn't double dutch and she was the worst player on her all-black basketball team. She was shy, uncool and painfully white. And yet when she was suddenly sent to a rich white school, she found she was too "black" to fit in with her white classmates. I'm Down is a hip, hysterical and at the same time beautiful memoir that will have you howling with laughter, recommending it to friends and questioning what it means to be black and white in America.

You're Teaching My Child What?
You're Teaching My Child What?

Author: Miriam Grossman

Publisher: Regnery Publishing

Published: 2009-08-04

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1596985542

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Exposes the lies and misconceptions about sex education taught to American children in school, including information on sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, and homosexuality.

Mrs. Fletcher
Mrs. Fletcher

Author: Tom Perrotta

Publisher: Scribner

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1982130636

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Now an HBO series starring Kathryn Hahn! “Light, zingy, and laugh-out-loud funny” (People), the New York Times bestselling novel about sex, love, and identity as seen through the eyes of a middle-aged woman and her college freshman son. A forty-six-year-old divorcee whose beloved only child has just left for college, Eve Fletcher is struggling to adjust to her empty nest. One night she receives a text from an anonymous number that says, “U R my MILF!” Over the months that follow, that message comes to obsess Eve. While leading her all-too-placid life—serving as Executive Director of the local senior center and taking a community college course on Gender and Society—Eve can’t curtail her own interest in a porn website that features the erotic exploits of ordinary, middle-aged women like herself. Before long, Eve’s online fixations begin to spill over into real life, revealing new romantic possibilities that threaten to upend her quiet suburban existence. Meanwhile, miles away at the state college, Eve’s son Brendan—a jock and aspiring frat boy—discovers that his new campus isn’t nearly as welcoming to his hard-partying lifestyle as he had imagined. Only a few weeks into his freshman year, Brendan is floundering in a college environment that challenges his white-dude privilege and shames him for his outmoded, chauvinistic ideas of sex. As the New England autumn turns cold, both mother and son find themselves enmeshed in morally fraught situations that come to a head on one fateful November night. “The sweetest and most charming novel about pornography addiction and the harrowing issues of sexual consent that you will probably ever read” (The New York Times Book Review), Mrs. Fletcher is a timeless examination of sexuality, identity, parenthood, and the big clarifying mistakes people can make when they’re no longer sure of who they are or where they belong. “Tom Perrotta’s latest might just be his best” (NPR).