Jerome's comic masterpiece — and one of the best-known classics of English humor — follows the misadventures of 3 bungling, Victorian-era bachelors who take off on a rowing excursion up the Thames. Their disastrous struggles with camping equipment, meal preparation, and rampant hypochondria trumpet simple truths that still resonate today. (144 pages)A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
Simon Vance has just the right plummy accent for an Indian merchant in post-colonial Africa. He has purchased a shop at a bend in the great river. He sells pencils, copy books, razor blades, and iron pots for people who live in the jungle. A friend has got the Big Burger franchise. "But the airplane is a wonderful thing," his brother tells him. "You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart." The jungle reasserts itself. Civilization withdraws. They are going to kill everybody who can read and write. Vance delivers the detached ferocity that won Naipaul the Nobel Prize. (288 pages)Walking Across Egypt by Clyde Edgerton
She has as much business keeping a stray dog as she would walking across Egypt–which not so incidentally is the title of her favorite hymn. She’s Mattie Rigsbee, an independent, strong-minded senior citizen who, at seventy-eight, might be slowing down just a bit. When teenage delinquent Wesley Benfield drops in on her life, he is even less likely a companion than the stray dog. But, of course, the dog never tasted her mouth-watering pound cake. Wise and witty, down-home and real, Walking Across Egypt is a book for everyone. (240 pages)
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