The best-selling author offers a new collection of satirical and humorous essays that chronicle his own life and ordinary moments that turn beautifully absurd, including how he coped with the pandemic, his thoughts on becoming an orphan in his seventh decade, and the battle-scarred America he discovered when he resumed touring.

A convenient companionship... ...and a passion neither expected! Ex-army officer Jack Rutherford is on the run-he must go to Aylesbury to prove his innocence! Opportunity strikes in the unconventional form of Matilda Grey, who needs help to pilot her canal barge. Jack is captivated by her unusual beauty, vulnerability and resilience. But traveling together in such close quarters, their mutual craving becomes as impossible to ignore as the secrets...

Published in 1956, Peyton Place became a bestseller and a literary phenomenon. A lurid and gripping story of murder, incest, female desire, and social injustice, it was consumed as avidly by readers as it was condemned by critics and the clergy. Its author, Grace Metalious, a housewife who grew up in poverty in a New Hampshire mill town and had aspired to be a writer from childhood, loosely based the novel's setting, characters, and incidents on real-life...