I'm not going to make any cosmic claims for Shining City, by Seth Greenland, but it had me laughing out loud over and over again. It concerns a rather hapless Los Angeles middle-management guy who falls into a wholly unexpected bonanza: His sleazy older brother dies of a splendidly stage-managed heart attack and leaves him a dry-cleaning business that turns out to be a front for a prostitution ring. I'd never before heard of Greenland, but Shining City sent me to his first novel, The Bones, and the two put me squarely in his fan club.

. . . as Shay puts it: "There is an enchantment to old books, especially ones signed by authors. It means that the writer held it in his or her hands. If that doesn't resonate with you, you are not a book lover.