Family life

Charlie Gordon knows that he isn't very bright. At 32, he mops floors in a bakery and earns just enough to get by. Three evenings a week, he studies at a center for mentally challenged adults. But all of this is about to change for Charlie. As part of a daring experiment, doctors are going to perform surgery on Charlie's brain.

Many people came to America in the early 1900s looking for jobs, opportunity, and freedom, and a lot of them were kids. But what happened to all these immigrant children after they passed inspection at New York’s Ellis Island - that is, if they passed inspection? Life was not easy for immigrants. Large families lived in small, one-room tenement apartments with failing plumbing and few windows.

Aiden and Meg Falconer are on the hunt for the one man who might be able to free their parents from jail. The hitch? There are plenty of other people on the hunt for THEM, including the FBI and an eerie, hairless killer.

David Sedaris' new collection of essays - including live recordings! - tells a most unconventional life story. It begins with a North Carolina childhood filled with speech-therapy classes ("There was the lisp, of course, but more troubling than that was my voice itself, with its excitable tone and high, girlish pitch") and unwanted guitar lessons taught by a midget.