Carol Lahines

Miracle Grow of the Mind is a funny, heartbreaking exploration of parenthood, disability, medical bureaucracy, Big Agro, food allergies, and environmental pathogens. When Amy and Michael's son is born prematurely, they are thrust into a world of pediatric neurologists, sensory reintegration therapy, and endless evaluations. Michael also struggles with a mother suffering from dementia, who insists he is the grown-up version of a brother who died in infancy. When the Kafkaesque Bureau of Preschool Special Education threatens to make their son repeat kindergarten, the family must confront how they are living and decide which therapies-- everything from Mel Finkelstein's sensory reintegration sessions to pediatric neurologist visits-- are worth the emotional toll. With the help of Griffin's babysitter Estella-- caught in a secret affair with Josef, a Hungarian psychiatris navigating his own child's special needs-- they arrive at an unexpected, poignant resolution. Smart, wry, and deeply human, this novel examines the ways love, absurdity, and hope intersect in the messy work of raising a child.

Ophelia, a professor of Dante, is stricken when she discovers that her husband Andy has been cheating on her with a winsome colleague. What follows is Ophelia’s figurative descent into hell as she obsessively tracks her subjects, performs surveillance in her beat-up Volvo, and moves into the property next door to Amber’s, which has gone into foreclosure. She spies on the lovers, growing more and more estranged from reality. Andy’s betrayal reawakens the earlier trauma of abandonment by her mother at the age of eight. When Andy and Amber become engaged, Ophelia snaps. The story is a jailhouse confessional, a dark comedy, an oeuvre of women’s rage, a suspenseful revenge fantasy, and a moving portrait of one woman’s psychological breakdown.

An eccentric music professor struggles with grief and guilt and questions the American justice system after his mother accidentally chokes to death on a wonton from a Chinese restaurant.Someday Everything Will All Make Sense follows Luther van der Loon, an eccentric professor of medieval music at a New York university, as he navigates the stages of grief after his 62-year-old mother chokes on a wonton from a Chinese take-out. Luther invokes the American justice system against the restaurant whose "sloppy methods" he blames for his mother's death. He blames himself for failing to perform the Heimlich, a maneuver so simple that a child of six or seven could execute it. Luther, who spent the entirety of his forty earthly years living with his mother in a co-op apartment in Tudor City, New York, must learn to conceive of a world in which his mother is no longer present. Luther finds redemption in music as he plans the annual symposium for his oddball group of early music colleagues. They believe, like Kepler and the greatest thinkers of the Renaissance, that music is to be constructed according to the divine Pythagorean ratios. Slowly, and with the help of his therapist girlfriend, Cecilia, Luther gropes toward resolution. The novel speaks to the universality of loss and the struggle to make sense of the nonsensical.Fans of John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces will appreciate the maladroitness of the protagonist and the dark humor woven into the narrative, as will readers of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, who will appreciate the artful and in-depth evocation of the process of grieving.

"It's rare to find a character like Luther van der Loon who makes such a rich and lasting impression-so vividly wounded, exuberant in characterization. Luther embodies the anxious, angst-ridden neurotic we are afraid we will become, or maybe who we aspire to be. In his grief over his mother's accidental choking vis- -vis death, his obsession with what is the point of life is simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious. I could read this novel a hundred times and never tire of it." - Amy E. Wallen, Author of When We Were Ghouls: A Memoir of Ghost Stories"An original and very funny novel about a man's obsessive longing and guilt after his mother accidentally chokes on wonton soup. We follow the endearing protagonist through a period of morning, cleverly interwoven with musical theory and an attempt to sue the Chinese take-out restaurant, all brought to a hilarious finale with a last symposium on medieval music." - Sheila Kohler, Author of numerous award-winning novels