"Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness....

"Margaret Anne 'Moddie' Yance had just returned to her native land in the Midwestern town of X, to mingle with the friends of her youth, to get back in touch with her roots, and to recover from a stressful decade of living in the city in a small apartment with a man she now believed to be a megalomaniac or perhaps a covert narcissist. So begins Halle Butler’s sadistically precise and hilarious Banal Nightmare, which follows Moddie as she abruptly...

Investigate the turbulent events that marked the beginning of the Middle Ages. Trace the rise of warrior peoples from the Asian steppes that brought down the Chinese, Indian, and Roman empires, and the advent of Germanic kings who ruled the West. Take account of the great trading networks that connected the civilizations of Asia with those of the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.