Guest of a Sinner

"It is 22 cats that drive the dazzlingly handsome Eric Thorsen to distraction and into the apartment -- if not immediately the arms -- of Wanda Skopinski, the rather mousy woman he meets at church when she thrusts a lesbian romance novel upon him. The stench from downstairs drives him from both his rent-controlled apartment and his complacency as a not-quite-successful piano teacher. In his sixth novel, James Wilcox moves beyond the modern South he has etched so vividly and amusingly in the past to take on Manhattan. But somehow he manages to bring the city down to size.... The book is filled with as eccentric an array of characters and as much gentle kinkiness as any small-town chronicle.... A winning and consistently entertaining story." -- Vogue

James Wilcox is the author of eight novels, including North Gladiola, Miss Undine's Living Room, and, most recently, Heavenly Days. His first novel, Modern Baptists, appeared on Q Magazine's list of forty-five "Best Fiction" selections and in Harold Bloom's The Western Canon. A professor of English and the director of creative writing at Louisiana State University, he has written for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, and Elle.