The Butcher Boy is a precisely crafted, often lyrical portrait of the descent into madness of a young killer in small-town Ireland. The story follows Francis "Francie" Brady, a schoolboy whose life slowly becomes macabre. Set in Ireland in the early 1960s, the novel encapsulates the grim and troubled realities of the time.

Francie is the "pig boy," the only child of an alcoholic father and a mother driven mad by despair. Growing up in a soul-stifling Irish town, Francie is bright, love-starved, and unhinged, his speech filled with street talk, his heart filled with pain...his actions perfectly monstrous. Held up for scorn by Mrs. Nugent, a paragon of middle-class values, and dropped by his best friend, Joe, in favor of her mamby-pamby son, Francie finally has a target for his rage—and a focus for his twisted, horrific plan.

Dark, haunting, and often screamingly funny, The Butcher Boy chronicles the pig boy's ominous loss of innocence and chilling descent into madness. No writer since James Joyce has had such marvelous control of rhythm and language... and no novel since The Silence Of The Lambs has stunned us with such a macabre, dangerous mind.

Birdy is an inventive, hypnotic novel that explores the intricacies of friendship and the depths of human dreams. Set against the backdrop of World War II, it tells the story of two friends with contrasting personalities.

Al is a bold, hot-tempered boy whose goals in life are to lift weights and pick up girls. In contrast, his strange friend Birdy is a skinny, tongue-tied, perhaps genius who dreams of raising canaries and flying. Their friendship is tested in the brutal reality of war, where dreams become all too real, and their lives are changed forever.

In Birdy, William Wharton crafts an unforgettable tale that suggests another notion of sanity in a world that is manifestly insane. It's a story about love and war, madness and beauty, and above all, the essence of "birdness."