New Releases by Russell Hoban

After Pilgermann, a German Jew in the year 1096, ravishes the tax collector's wife, an angry Christian mob retaliates by brutally castrating him. Bleeding and left for dead, Pilgermann experiences a vision of Jesus Christ and resolves to set out on a journey to the Holy Land. Along the way, he will be joined by a motley group of companions: the headless corpse of the tax collector, a lascivious talking pig, a dead bear, and Death himself. In the story of Pilgermann's quest, by turns funny and nightmarish, Russell Hoban is at his most original and most imaginative.

Roman.

Arthur Crocodile cannot seem to learn table manners until his sister brings her new girlfriend to visit.

In this, his first novel, Russell Hoban writes of a time in which there are no lions any more. Middle-aged Jachin-Boaz the map-seller leaves his wife, taking with him the map that was to give his son a start in life. The boy performs rites at the palace of a long-dead king, and far away the father wakes one morning to find a lion waiting for him in the street. Painful, funny, vivid with the desperate detail of life, this book goes beyond the ordinary range of experience.

One day Thelma tricks Frances into buying her old plastic tea set. Thelma says there are no backsies on the bargain. Can Frances come up with a plan that will change her friend's mind? Outstanding Children's Books of 1970 (NYT)

Frances is jealous of her sister's birthday, spirit moves her reluctanty to give her coveted gift.

When Father comes home at the end of a sorely trying day, he finds all the family fighting and scolding after a sequence of events for which no one is willing to take the blame.

A magic stone helps Walter look around and find things to do.