To complement his work as a fiction writer, John Updike accepted any number of odd jobs—book reviews and introductions, speeches and tributes, a “few paragraphs” on baseball or beauty or Borges—and saw each as “an opportunity to learn something, or to extract from within some unsuspected wisdom.” In this, his largest collection of assorted prose, he brings generosity and insight to the works and lives of William Dean Howells, George Bernard Shaw, Philip Roth, Muriel Spark, and dozens more. Novels from outposts of postmodernism like Turkey, Albania, Israel, and Nigeria are reviewed, as are biographies of Cleopatra and Dorothy Parker. The more than a hundred considerations of books are flanked, on one side, by short stories, a playlet, and personal essays, and, on the other, by essays on his own oeuvre. Updike’s odd jobs would be any other writer’s chief work.

College student Kevin Davenport is working any and every odd job to make it through school. He discovers who killed his father while working at the corrupt, mob-controlled, Kosher World Meat Factory. Now he will stop at nothing to prevent the killers from ruining other families and to get his revenge. Going to the police and conventional methods have not only been ineffective for others, but has proven to be virtual suicide for them. So all bets are off and Davenport uses the grittiest and strangest tools to bring down the killers. The characters, misadventures and odd jobs will have the readers laughing, but the hazard is real and Davenport is in over his head.

Ella has moved to the spooky town of Windy Hollow to live with her Great Aunt Raven. She is kept busy by a series of odd jobs arranged by her mysterious aunt. Alphabetizing the shelves at Simon's Book Store seems like a simple odd job. But then Ella meets a little girl who wants to tell Ella a story. But then she stumbles upon the surprise ending of the little girl's untold story! Aligned to Common Core standards and correlated to state standards. Spellbound is an imprint of Magic Wagon, a division of ABDO.

Baker Jones needs an extra set of hands to man the register at his bleak bakery. Where there should be heavenly aromas and tasty treats, Ella finds stale crumbs and bare shelves. But that's not all that's odd about this place! With their piercing blue eyes and soulless stares, the bakery's creepy customers are what spook Ella the most.

In First Jobs, reporter Merritt Watts collects real stories of early forays into the workforce from a range of eras and industries, and a diversity of backgrounds. For some, a first job is a warm welcome to the working world. For others, it's a rude awakening, but as these stories show, it's an influential, entertaining experience that should not be underestimated. A future mayor shining shoes, an atheist shilling Bibles, a housewife heading to work during World War II, a now-famous designer getting fired-we all got our start somewhere. A first job may not have the romance of the first kiss or the excitement of a first car, but more than anything else, it offers a taste of true independence and a preview of what the world has in store for us. This book transforms what we might think of as a single, unassuming line at the bottom of a résumé into a collection of absorbing tales and hard-earned wisdom to which we can all, for better or worse, relate.

"A collection of 65 brand-new, gorgeously staged black and white portraits of people performing their odd jobs, and short descriptions of their work"--Provided by publisher.

Jonathan Krieger was a few years out of college, making his living playing online poker, when the US Department of Justice shut the industry down. Unemployed and in debt, he did what any twenty-something in 2011 would do: He started a blog. Specifically, a blog about his new life trying to earn money any way he could. He tested landmine detection technology, delivered singing telegrams, sold his blood, posed as one half of a conjoined twin, auditioned for a gameshow, and, perhaps most harrowing of all, became a substitute teacher. Odd Jobs weaves together tales from the blog with the story of Krieger's life as he struggled to crawl out of the financial abyss and find the one job he might actually want to keep.