Farley Brothers Drugs and Sundries

Book excerpt: Farley Brothers Drugs & Sundries is a collection of short stories set in small towns. Sissy, tomboy protagonist in the title story, types wills for a lawyer, pitches softball, and yearns for "a life." Her yearnings bubble to spill-over point when not one, but two eligible men move to town and put the moves on her. In "Allie's Daring Adventure," a middle-aged housewife decides to add zing to her love life and plots to seduce her fisherman husband. "Cousin Stan Turns on the Charm" features Stan, who hoodwinks the ladies in his retirement trailer park until his more truthful cousin Roy comes to visit. "Driving Delbert Lemieux's Second-best Hearse" follows the misadventures of two feckless buddies as they attempt to deliver a corpse. In "A Man of Means," the protagonist struggles to become someone important, someone the townspeople admire. Dale, in "My Brother's Wife," moves in with his brother's widow and learns that the wild life isn't always the good life. Twelve stories in all, this collection offers laughter-and a tear or two--at our human foibles.