This heartwarming collection includes more than 30 true, contemporary stories told by a variety of writers, including Melody Carlson, Lauraine Snelling, and Kristin Billerbeck. Each feel-good story involves cat rescue, some in a typical way and others in surprising - even miraculous - ways. Sometimes the question becomes: Really, who rescued whom? 

The last thing Gwen Cooper wanted was another cat. She already had two, not to mention a phenomenally underpaying job and a recently broken heart. Then Gwen’s veterinarian called with a story about a three-week-old eyeless kitten who’d been abandoned. It was love at first sight.

Laurie Zaleski never aspired to run an animal rescue; that was her mother Annie’s dream. But from girlhood, Laurie was determined to make the dream come true. Thirty years later as a successful businesswoman, she did it, buying a 15-acre farm deep in the Pinelands of South Jersey. She was planning to relocate Annie and her caravan of ragtag rescues - horses and goats, dogs and cats, chickens and pigs - when Annie died, just two weeks before moving day. In her heartbreak, Laurie resolved to make her mother’s dream her own. 

Newspapers may be full of doom-and-gloom headlines, but the lucky people who live with cats get to be happy each and every day. Then again, if you live with cats you probably don’t see those terrifying headlines, anyway (because your cat won’t get off the paper long enough for you to read it), and that’s sort of the point. Cats make the very best companions for hundreds of reasons. The Book of Pawsome is a touching and raspy-tongue-in-cheek reminder that, even in a world gone mad, cat lovers always have plenty to smile about.

Is it too much to ask that a managed care facility refund a year’s advance payment when your grandfather dies before he can move in? Frank Johnson doesn’t think so, which is why the 33-year-old now lives in a nursing home, locked in a chess-match feud with management that doesn’t occupy nearly enough of his time. When foster kid Elroy is thrust into his life, Frank decides to turn this forced relationship to his advantage - launching a string of absurd decisions, inappropriate behaviors, and unexpected glimpses of tenderness that ultimately turn a New Jersey suburb upside down.