The Pale King, David Foster WallaceThe "breathtakingly brilliant" novel by the author of Infinite Jest (New York Times) is a deeply compelling and satisfying story, as hilarious and fearless and original as anything Wallace ever wrote. The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom survival

a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne

I was at the mall and I dropped my phone into the fountain

She really doesn't shy away from sticky

Simon calls in his old friend Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley

This ambitious volume

As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns

Because as the ghosts of the South’s past gather around Willie

that alienation sometimes is

As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life

handle conflict with confidence

Paul Harding is the author of two novels about multiple generations of a New England family: Enon and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tinkers

but as relations sour he starts to doubt the wisdom of past decisions