Its the early 1980s-the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable...

Spanning eight decades and chronicling the wild ride of a Greek-American family through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, Jeffrey Eugenides' novel on one level tells a traditional story about three generations of an immigrant family -- blessed and cursed with generous doses of tragedy and high comedy. But there's a provocative twist. Cal, the narrator -- also Callie -- is an hermaphrodite. And the explanation for this takes us spooling back...

Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is a hermaphrodite, a situation with roots in her grandparents' desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s.

A collection of love story excerpts from classic literary works, culled by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Middlesex, includes selections by such writers as Alice Munro, William Faulkner, and Milan Kundera, in a volume published to benefit the McSweeney literacy project 826 Chicago.

Kassie, a smart, fun-loving single woman, despite her neurotic best friend Wally's objections, decides it's time to have a baby, even if it means doing it herself, with a little help from a charming sperm donor. But, unbeknownst to her, Kassie's plans go awry because of a last-minute switch that isn't discovered until seven years later, when Wally gets acquainted with Kassie's cute, though slightly neurotic, son.

Despite her neurotic best friend Wally's objections, single woman Kassie decides to have a baby on her own, carefully choosing the sperm donor, but a last-minute switch is not discovered until Wally meets her slightly neurotic son seven years later.