Peter De Vries

This novel was based on the life of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, a compulsive womanizer and alcoholic. In the story a poetic Welsh farmer becomes involved with urban newcomers to his rural New England area and ends up accidentally committing suicide. He is about to remove the noose from his neck when the dog Reuben bounds in and knocks the stool he is standing on from under him. The story was made into a 1983 film.

A sort of cross between Thorne Smith and Dorothy Parker, with a dash of Oscar Wilde. The plot is really just a scaffold to support a stream of witty epigrams, but the chief target is small-town American marriage. Intelligent and funny.

Sara knew Adam wouldn't just go away Dr. Sara Prentiss had found a haven in Chandler College. The small New England campus offered her the privacy she so badly needed after Guy had broken her heart. And Olivia Reynolds had become the mother Sara longed for. Then Adam Merrill, the famous mystery writer, arrived--and he found what he was looking for--a real-life mystery-right in the middle of Sara's peaceful little world. Why on earth should she find him attractive when he was making her life so impossible? But she had to admit, she did.

Be whisked out along Iowa backroads to see the sexual revolution in full sway in what only yesterday was called the Bible Belt, with a marriage counselor named Bill Bumpers at the wheel, driving with the top down and the accelerator floored. Uncertain whether he is saving the institution of marriage or officiating at tis demise, Dr. Bumpers nurses a rural union into a ménage à trois, and into a sort of updated Brook Farm commune.

Thursday night's political science class is pulling in an unlikely crowd: the teacher's a slick lawyer who wears $400 shoes, and the worst student is a mob henchman who nods off as soon as the lecture begins. Not that Jimmy Flannery is one to judge. What's this idealistic sewer inspector, Chicago ward chief, and new father doing at night school anyway? He's getting an education in the finer points of the Chicago machine, where politics, patronage, and organized crime shake hands. Jimmy - a decent guy in a dishonest world - is familiar with his town's mangled grammar, its dirty contract deals, and the strange disappearances of those who become a liability. But night school is fast becoming a crash course in crime. First one classmate - the mob figure - dies in a suspicious mugging, and then the teacher, attorney Frank Vollmer, drops out of sight after promising Jimmy he'll take on a pro bono case. Using his vast network of local connections both within and way outside the law, Jimmy weaves together a complicated picture that includes cheating spouses, suicide, and two disputed legacies. One involves a very well-off canine. The other, far more sinister, will determine who controls the city of Chicago.

What's it like to be a stud, or hunk, wanted by both women and the law? Such is the quandary of Eddie Teeters after producing and performing in a series of sex-counseling movie shorts aimed at schooling television viewers in the art of love. He considers them educational erotica but a federal prosecutor regards them as actionable pornography.

When the family gathers to celebrate a New England couple's fortieth wedding anniversary, the formidable and witty offspring nearly break up the marriage itself. A satire on the "family neurosis."

The amorous and pastoral problems of a very liberal minister. Satirical, light comedy.

A reporter attempts to re-educate a young recluse poetess by means of the spirit of nonconformance in the modern novel. Parodies Various literary styles, from Marquand to Kafka.