"According to Murphy's Law, "If anything can go wrong, it will." This humorous hardcover compilation offers a wealth of variations on the well-known adage, including maxims related to business matters, excuses, efficiency, and legal jargon. It also features a "Bureaucratic Survival Kit," "Old Saws Resharpened," "How to Tell the Difference Between Democrats and Republicans," and other comic

Watson explores the subtle forces of memory fields and suggests that matter has the capacity to absorb emotional "fingerprints," the mental fossils that channel echoes from the past. He demonstrates the complexity of inanimate life and offers possible proof of our sensitivity to its minute, natural patterns of

Written as liner notes to fictional music, Christopher Miller's uproarious debut novel skewers conventions in a work of high entertainment and imagination. In Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects, the complete works of the prodigiously cranky composer Simon Silber get their diablolical due from Silber's official biographer -- a man who grows to hate his subject. Not content with simply discussing Silber's odd musical oeuvre -- whose highlights include an hourlong performance of the "Minute Waltz," an etude composed on a telephone keypad, and a transcription of crow caws -- the commentator veers into a delightfully venomous exposé of a musician