In the wake of a drama teacher's decision to direct "Lysistrata" for the high school play, the women in the town begin to sexually reject their husbands and boyfriends in ways that force both men and women to reevaluate their views on relationships and sexuality.

"After a long winter sleep, Bear wakes up with one thing in mind--honey! But it's too soon for honey, so he must wait. Fortunately, the world around him is also waking up, reminding Bear of other things he loves and allowing him to take pleasure in the passage of time."--Page [2] of cover.

A delightfully candid memoir, unfettered, poetic, and ripe with discovery, "The Wishing Year" chronicles Oxenhandler's journey into the art and soul of wishing. Soon she discovers that what started as a year's dare has turned into a way of life.

"A group of robots demonstrates the difference between a want and a need, by making trades to get some things they really want and accidentally giving away some things they really need"-- "Do you know the difference between a want and a need? It can be a hard thing to understand, especially when you want something so much that you feel like you have to have it. But some things aren't essential--like jellybean tacos and groovy boots. Other things...

"Beautifully spare and deeply strange, Dandelions--exploring love and madness--is Kawabata's final novel, left incomplete when he committed suicide in April, 1972. The book concerns Ineko's mother and Kuno, the young man who loves Ineko and wants to marry her. The two have left Ineko at the Ikuta Mental Hospital, which she has entered for treatment of a condition that might be called "seizures of body blindness." Although her vision as a whole is...

An examination of the paradox at the core of female sexuality argues that public-life requirements often directly contrast with intimate desires.

"A passionate portrait of love's contradictory power, in five illuminating stories André Aciman, who has been called "the most exciting new fiction writer of the twenty-first century" (New York magazine), has written a novel that chronicles the life of Paul, whose loves remain as consuming and covetous throughout his life as they were in adolescence. Whether in southern Italy, where as a boy he has a crush on his parents' cabinetmaker; or on a snowbound...