Darryl Ponicsan

Now a major movie starring Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne, directed by Richard Linklater! Darryl Ponicsan's debut novel The Last Detail was named one of the best of the year and widely acclaimed, catapulting him to fame when it was first published. The story of two career sailors assigned to escort a young seaman from Norfolk to the naval prison in Portsmouth, New Hampshire-and of the mayhem that ensues-was made into an award-winning...

At a library used book sale, Ponicsán picked up a copy of Nora Ephron's bestseller, "I Feel Bad About My Neck." It inspired him over the next several years to answer her observations from the male point of view and over a different bodily part, and to direct it to Ephron's audience. Part memoir, part parody, part social analysis. (Publisher's note: This is not just a guy's book, or an old guy's book…It's amusing and full of interesting tales and...

Two Navy Petty officers are detailed to take a prisoner from Washington to jail in New Hampshire and decide to give the prisoner one last good time as they head north.

High school wrestler Louden Swain is a man obsessed, trying to shed 23 pounds in a dangerously short time and take on Shute, the undefeated, tough-as-nails 168-pound champion who's the best wrestler in the state.

Set in the 1950s: David Greene, a working-class Jewish quarterback from Scranton, Pennsylvania, is offered a football scholarship to a prestigious New England prep. school. It's David's ticket to an Ivy League education and a way out of his hometown, but there's one condition: the school's elders ask him to be discreet about his religion. At first willing to do so, David struggles with his silence as his popularity grows. David strikes up a friendship...

"When a fiercely devoted group of military school cadets learns that their school is being sold to real estate developers, they refuse to accept defeat-- instead choosing to rise up together to protect the academy and their honor. But the brave young soldiers soon learn that the most courageous decisions can sometimes have unexpected and even fatal consequences!"--Container.

In the Talented Mr. Ripley, Tom Ripley is a calculating young man who believes its better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody. He's hired to go to Italy to bring back the playboy son of a millionaire and soon is plunged into a daring scheme of duplicity, lies and murder. In School ties, David Greene, a popular student at an exclusive New England prep school, becomes the object of ridicule and scorn when his Jewish heritage is revealed, leading...