Frank Buck is a fat f*ck. A slob, a middle-aged loser, he’s living in Chicagoland with his mother and collecting disability checks, drinking Svedka vodka and driving aimlessly through the nighttime city in the one thing in his life that brings him joy and freedom—a 1989 Cadillac Brougham D’Elegance.

Unfortunately he also has a talent.

His great weight, his ballast, makes him a remarkable shot with all manner of weapons. And this eventually draws him into the orbit of a local gangster and psychopath, a Polaroid-toting maniac named Rodger. In short order Frank is trapped in a seemingly endless and cartoonish routine of bloodshed and gore, a criminal Sisyphus pushing a soul-wearying boulder—or perhaps a biblical figure blundering towards an improbable Golgotha.

Joseph G. Peterson has attracted a devoted readership for his unique blend of sad and funny writing—a series of remarkable books centered around lovable losers stuck in absurdly existential situations reminiscent of both Camus and the Coen Brothers. Here he’s created perhaps his most memorable book, a pulpy reverie unlike anything you’ll ever read.

With Jerks, Sara Lippmann rides the proverbial clutch between wanting and having. Ambivalent mothers, aging suburbanites, restless teens, survivalist parents, and disaffected wives—desire is a live wire, however frayed; a reminder that life, for all its sputtering stall outs, is still worth living. The messy characters in these eighteen stories may hack up their bedsheets with group sex, anonymous sex, infidelity, and a literal handsaw, but there's tenderness, too, among the lust and rage. With crisp precision, ample honesty and desperate humor, Lippmann delivers an irresistibly fraught cast of characters at various stages of undress.

Frank Buck is a fat f*ck. A slob, a middle-aged loser, he’s living in Chicagoland with his mother and collecting disability checks, drinking Svedka vodka and driving aimlessly through the nighttime city in the one thing in his life that brings him joy and freedom—a 1989 Cadillac Brougham D’Elegance.

Unfortunately he also has a talent.

His great weight, his ballast, makes him a remarkable shot with all manner of weapons. And this eventually draws him into the orbit of a local gangster and psychopath, a Polaroid-toting maniac named Rodger. In short order Frank is trapped in a cartoonish and seemingly endless routine of bloodshed and gore, a criminal Sisyphus pushing a soul-wearying boulder—or perhaps a biblical figure blundering towards an improbable Golgotha.

Joseph G. Peterson has attracted a devoted readership for his unique blend of sad and funny writing—a series of remarkable books centered around lovable losers stuck in absurdly existential situations reminiscent of both Camus and the Coen Brothers. Here he’s created perhaps his most memorable book, a pulpy reverie unlike anything you’ll ever read.