But You Scared Me The Most

 

This collection of twenty-six dark but often humorous short stories features a pantheon of disturbed and disturbing characters, human and otherwise. Many of the stories are modern takes on classic monsters crafted with twisted plots. The Wolfman of “Wolfman and Janice” is doing the best he can under very trying circumstances, especially when confronted with eating his elderly neighbor’s cat. There’s an adolescent vampire-wannabe suffering badly: in love for the first time. “Frankenstein and His Mother” is a terrifying story of a grown man who wears a Frankenstein mask, lives with his mother, watches TV, and eats corn chips all day, too afraid to work.  “Dracula’s Daughter” turns a pretentious hippie into an honest ghost. And Bigfoot—lonely, sexually frustrated—tells all. Other stories feature characters who seem perfectly normal until they’re alone. Phil, for instance, is never so happy as when he’s with his inflatable girlfriend, Vanessa—until she tells him the devastating truth about himself. Elderly Ellen runs out of patience with her dead husband George, who’s turned prankish. “Bob and Todd,” tells the story of a hitchhiking ride gone bad that will have readers squirming in their seats. More than just standard monster stories, the tales in But You Scared Me the Most reveal the dark heart of human nature

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Sam and His Brother Len

 

This is the funny, poignant story of two brothers growing up in the early ’60s. Manderino lightly approaches the underside of the middle American family in a tumultuous period of history.

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Reason for Leaving: Job Stories A Novel

 

On a job application, there’s that tricky question: reason for leaving? John Manderino’s answers are collected here in this hilarious novel tracing the history of a guy trying to grow up job by job. Delivery boy, altar boy, busboy, teacher, cotton picker, umpire, Zen monk—Manderino’s protagonist tries on one hat after another.

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Bopper's Progress  

Bopper is a directionless young man who has found himself on a month-long retreat at a Zen Buddhist monastery in upper-state New York. The novel fluctuates between revealing the reasons Bopper ended up there (including his girlfriend falling for her Zen-centric tennis instructor) and the predicaments, mostly self-inflicted, that he navigates while he’s there (including his lemon drop-sucking roommate/nemesis). The story is told over the course of Bopper’s day at the monastery, from morning wake-up to the day’s end, through complicated meals, surprising whacks at meditation, conflict-filled group chores, and tiny moments of grace.

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The H-Bomb and the Jesus Rock

It’s Saturday, October 27, 1962, the darkest day of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Two children, Ralph and his little sister Lou, are searching for empty bottles in a vacant lot when they discover a rock that—to them, at least—looks quite a lot like Jesus. Ralph immediately declares it a Possible Holy Object. And, since his fondest wish is to be a “boy-in-a-story,” he earnestly places himself and Lou—now his “sidekick”—in a tale featuring the “sacred rock” as the key to nothing less than saving the world from nuclear annihilation. 

But there’s another boy, Toby—older, shrewder, and quite a bit larger—who has very different plans for the rock, intending to use it as a lucrative sideshow exhibit, complete with fliers: Is it Jesus? Or just a rock? You decide! Hovering over the children and their small-scale war is the general anxiety and dread attending the most perilous moment in our history. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, John Manderino’sThe H-bomb and the Jesus Rock provides a unique, children’s-eye view of that near-Armageddon.

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The Man Who Once Played Catch With Nellie Fox  

At forty, Hank has decided he’s through with baseball—a routine pop-up fell on his head and he got the message. The trouble is, baseball is the one thing that’s given any meaning to his life. This is the painfully funny story of a man who decides to get a life but isn’t sure how. It’s about fathers and sons, heroes and whiners, the wheel of fortune (and Vanna White), baseball, and the decline of Western civilization—and why Nellie Fox always spat in his glove.

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Crying at Movies- A Memoir

When Hitchcock’s The Birds began showing in the summer of 1963 at the Dolton Theater, the starlings of Riverside, Illinois launched their attacks. They were “black, freckled, oily-looking things” with “tiny black buttons for eyes.” They carried off Skippy Whalen’s baseball cap, pooped on Father Rowley’s finger, and attacked a feisty little dog named Tuffy who fought them off. “I blamed Hitchcock,” says the author, a Catholic grammar school student at the time. In this comical, witty memoir, John Manderino shows us how the pivotal points of his life have been enmeshed with movie moments. Crying at Movies presents thirty-eight succinct chapters, each bearing the title of a film. It is at once a love letter to an art form and a humorous appreciation of the distinctions between movie scenes and life’s realities.

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The True Meaning of Myrrh

A holiday book that will be joyful pulled out year after year to be read.
It isn’t fair. Len’s been asking for hockey gloves since before Thanksgiving but when he opens the only promising-looking box left under the tree, there they are house slippers. Meanwhile, his older brother Sam receives not only the sophisticated smoking jacket he asked for but a tape recorder to capture all the magic in his special holiday broadcast, Christmas with the Rossini Family, 1966, brought to you by Butternut Bread.
Making matters worse, the boy’s politically divided parents have a serious falling-out while driving home from Mass something to do with the Holy Family versus the welfare state and now they’re not talking.
Some Christmas, Dad declares, opening a late-morning beer.
Will Len manage to rise above the bitter disappointment of house slippers? Will his parents reach across the aisle for the sake of the day? Will Sam learn a Christmas lesson that does t fit smoothly into his holiday broadcast?
In John Manderino’s ‘The True Meaning of Myrrh’ these and other questions get answered, including what myrrh is or isn’t.

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