Thirteen Albatrosses — Donald Harington

For decades, Donald Harington has delighted readers with ribald, colorful adventures from Stay More, Arkansas, an imaginary Ozark enclave where shrewd and sexy hill folk mingle with reclusive millionaires rich from Wal-Mart stock, indigenous Indians, and legendary leftovers from the town's occasionally magical and completely mythical past. Now, with Thirteen Albatrosses, Harington returns to Stay More to document the uproarious attempt of native son Vernon Ingledew to earn the governorship of his great, if sometimes much-maligned, state. But, to his own shock, Ingledew-a handsome but less than telegenic ham magnate and self-educated polymath-is hampered by what his opponents refer to as his "Thirteen Albatrosses." Among them: he is an atheist; he never attended college; he lives in sin with his first cousin, Jelena; he displays a hysterically cryptic vocabulary. Not to mention the fact that he also supports "extirpating"-that is, getting rid of-hospitals, schools, prisons, tobacco, and handguns.