The Financial Lives of the Poets (Harper Perennial)

<p><strong>Darkly funny surprisingly tender . . . witheringly dead-on. -- <em>Los Angeles Times</em></strong></p><p><strong>Named one of the year's best novels by: <em>Time</em> - <em>Salon.com</em> - <em>Los Angeles Times</em> - <em>NPR/Fresh Air</em> - <em>New West</em> - <em>Kansas City Star</em> - <em>St. Louis Post-Dispatch</em></strong></p><p><strong>A comic and heartfelt novel from the #1 <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>Beautiful Ruins and Cold Millions</em> about how we get to the edge of ruin--and how we begin to make our way back.</strong></p><p>What happens when small-time reporter Matthew Prior quits his job to gamble everything on a quixotic notion: a Web site devoted to financial journalism in the form of blank verse?</p><p>Before long he wakes up to find himself jobless hobbled with debt spying on his wife's online flirtation and six days away from losing his home. . . . Until one night on a desperate two a.m. run to 7-Eleven he falls in with some local stoners and they end up hatching the biggest--and most misbegotten--plan yet.</p><p> </p>