"Roland Merullo's playful, eloquent, and life-affirming novel finds the Pope and the Dalai Lama teaming up for an unsanctioned road trip through the Italian countryside to rediscover the everyday joys of life that can seem, even for the two holiest men in the world, unattainable. What happens when the Pope and the Dali Lama decide they need an undercover vacation? During a highly publicized official visit at the Vatican, the Pope suggests an adventure...

In the words of Alexander McCall Smith: 'You feel the rocking of the train, you hear the sound of its wheels on the rails; you are in the world rather than suspended somewhere above it. And sometimes there are conversations to be had, which is what the overarching story in this collection is all about. It is a simple device: people brought together entertain one another with tales of what happened to them on trains. It takes place on a journey I frequently...

Struggling to maintain a grasp on reality after his wife's suicide, a soul-searching and inebriated traveling salesman peddles beauty wares and quickies to lonely southern England housewives while his son waits in their car.

"A man wakes up one morning believing he has a wife who lives in Tucumcari, New Mexico. A wife he somehow remembers yet does not know. When he decides to find her, he embarks on a surreal journey through both landscape and memory. The reader travels with the narrator through sinking cities, his father's various jobs, government-designated atomic safe havens, motel rooms, cities made of only men, and interactions with people from his childhood including...

"The first fifty or so years of Otto's journey were pretty good. He felt he had it all until one day he didn't. Looking for answers, he calls on his enlightened brother-in-law, Volya Rinpoche, a wise man with Russian roots, a Tibetan heritage, and an international reputation as a spiritual teacher ... Otto needs his brother-in-law's wisdom, ... and ... it turns out that Rinpoche himself is also looking for guidance. They embark on a road trip over...

"When the Twin Towers suddenly reappear in the Badlands of South Dakota, twenty years after their fall, nobody can explain their return...the towers seem to sing, even as everybody hears a different song. A rumor overtakes the throng that someone can be seen in the high windows of the southern structure. On the ninety-third floor, Jesse Presley, the stillborn twin of the most famous singer who ever lived, suddenly awakes, driven mad over the hours...

When Billie is released from a correctional facility in Decatur, her sister Rhiannon is there to meet her, even though the two haven't seen each other in months. Painful secrets and numerous unspoken betrayals linger between them--but most agonizing is the sudden passing of their mother, a renowned paleontologist. Rhiannon and Billie must overcome their differences as they set off on a road trip west, following the breadcrumb-trail of their late mother's...

"Dara, savvy in business but not so savvy in love, has unexpectedly found success running a monthly tag sale after losing her job and inheriting her uncle's farmette in Maryland. Colleen, feeling underappreciated and in a rut with her husband and kids, rents a stall at Dara's tag sale, and now the two women are embarking on a two-week antiquing/thrift shopping roadtrip to Florida in the hopes of finding some diamonds in the rough to fix up and sell....

"One night, everyone on Earth has the same dream--a dream of being guided to a watery death by a loved one on November 1. When they wake up, most people agree: after Halloween, the world will end. In the wake of this haunting dream and saddled with its uncertainty, Lyd and her daughter, Mott, navigate a changed world, wrestling with how to make choices when you really don't know what comes next. Embarking on a quixotic road trip filled with a collection...