Nathan Grey's unsuccessful attempt to sleep with a prostitute spurs an introspective examination of his life. He turns to his therapist for advice, but the man's cryptic, sociological experiments lead Grey into still more confusion. While drinking at an airport bar (another of his shrink's bizarre prescriptions), he is arrested by the need to travel. He takes to the road, the car's onboard GPS unit and his PDA phone as his only companions.

His aimless meandering takes him on a bizarre trip through Western and Middle America, where he encounters all manner of peculiar people. He is seemingly making progress, working through his torpor, when he meets a young hotel clerk named Melanie. The girl just might be the catalyst that will propel Grey from his alienation and back into the world at large.

But when a terrible accident occurs, Grey's apathy threatens to consume him entirely.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"...[Grey's Apathy] may be the ... best book ... ever ... read, and I defy anyone to ... not ... love [Grey's Apathy] as much as I did." -- Earl Flemming, Washington Post Tribune Herald News

"I love this book about as much as I love my husband." -- Jennifer Northington

Deviating slightly from his usual approach to literature, Northington's first science-fiction novel is set in an isolated research facility in the twenty-second century. Charles Banville is an English expatriate who is unable to afford a ticket home. Diagnosed with AAD (Attention Abundance Disorder), he loses his job and is unable to apply for another. In the depths of misery and poverty, he discovers an ad in the paper; a scientific research project is calling for volunteers, no experience required.

Banville's curiosity--in addition to the modest sum of money that the program offers--leads him into a world he'd never known existed. It is a world of scientific mysteries, paranormal phenomena, and parapsychology. During his stay at the research facility, he meets psychotic scientists, two meddlesome psychic twins, a lovely woman named Helena, and yes, a family extremely intelligent Bonobo chimps. Told with wry humor and a sharp focus on neuroscience and evolution, as well as a bit of philosophy and pure absurdity, This Business of Monkeys is a story of a possible future wherein mankind has given up trying to explore outer space and has, instead, begun to use technology for a much different journey--the journey into humanity's many uncharted territories.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"I really liked the synopsis, but I haven't gotten around to reading the book. One thing's for sure; I plan on getting that form letter to Mr. Northington after eight months, on the dot. I'm not going to string him along." -- David Gomes, Literary Agent

"There are few books that make me want to kill myself [because I know I'll never read anything like it again]. This is one of those books." -- Posthumous quote from Anonymous source

If it's genre-bending you're after, Novel: A Book is your final destination. This murder-mystery-sci-fi-romance-travelogue is the story of Willem Barechild, aspiring travel writer, composing his second travel narrative--his trip to Peru. But there's something very odd about his journey. Whereas we join him on his romps through the Peruvian nightlife of Cusco, witness him exploring the many beautiful sights of the city called "The Navel of the World," we soon become aware that Barechild's story is not exactly as it appears.

Enter Loren Randall, Barechild's literary agent. Completely mistaking the nature of the writer's story, Randall continuously steers the narrative as an unseen force; one moment he's convinced Barechild to focus on a murder mystery, though it is doubtful the murder occurred at all. Furthermore, a majority of Barechild's tale takes place after he participates in an Incan ritual, drinking a hallucinogenic mixture called "Sorcerer's Stew" atop an Andean peak called "God Mountain." He finds himself transported to a place called Campus Hippo, where people delight in schooling for various skills, including but not limited to time travel, shape-shifting, and telekinesis.

The lines between reality and fantasy blur as Barechild's frustration with writing "the real story" continues to rise. All the while Randall is hiding in the margins, and it's difficult to tell just how much influence this invisible party is having on the story. Along with Barechild's first-person account of his experiences, there are also abundant footnotes where one finds an extension to the story that is both hilarious and absurd, though at times educational. Novel: A Book explores the perils of "writing for the crowd" and the writer's desire to remain true to his subject. But it's also just a fun story about a world ruled by talking monkeys and people as incarnations of literary devices.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"Novel: A Book is quite possibly the best novel of said title to have originated in any period in history. It is droll, and yet takes a serious look at a writer's plight. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, were I still living." -- Thomas Mann

"Very seldom does an author capture what Northington has captured in this book. What that is, exactly, I don't really know, but it was definitely captured." -- Northington's third-grade social studies teacher

What appears at first to be simply the journal entries of an oenotherapist (one who cures ailments through application of wine), suddenly betrays itself as anything but your rudimentary "confessional" novel. Dr. Barrington Fogg is recording the goings-on of his everyday life, treating patients, drinking brandy, reading the newspaper. But from the very beginning, it's apparent that something is amiss.

Our story shifts suddenly to the ramblings of a wannabe "Beat era" novelist, circa 1958. Lenny, a young Mulatto with a Basset hound as his faithful companion, is determined to rescue his recent manuscript from his ex-girlfriend. He embarks on a journey from a small East Coast town to Boston University, where he gets blindly drunk and passes out in a boiler room.

Lenny awakes in what appears to be a wine cellar. He is locked in. In the meantime, back at Dr. Fogg's sanatorium, peculiar things are happening. A woman's face is slowly changing shape, becoming more asymmetrical day by day; the telegraph machine is broken and all contact with the outside world has been lost; furthermore, no one can leave the sanatorium grounds as per a peculiar phenomenon that seems to have built invisible walls around the area. But what's even more peculiar is that Lenny, who'd fallen asleep in 1958, is found in the sanatorium wine cellar, near-dead from alcohol poisoning.

Once nursed to health, Lenny eventually accepts what couldn't possibly be real, that he's suddenly back in 1906, on the English countryside. He takes the position of footman for the sanatorium, as many of the service staff there have been vanishing mysteriously. Though Fogg himself disapproves of the young man, he accepts this arrangement begrudgingly. After a while, it seems that the bizarre occurrences have drawn to a close. But the worst is yet to come.

This is a story about ordinary people in extremely extraordinary situations. It is an exploration into how people choose to adapt to impossible circumstances, what they believe might really be happening, and how far they might go to find an explanation--if there is one at all. It is a tale told by the characters themselves, and their experiences not only affect the way they behave, but the very text of the novel itself.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"This is a Beat novel that takes place in a magical realism world, by an author who allegedly dislikes both sub-genres equally. Think Salman Rushdie and Kenneth Patchen get wildly drunk and collaborate on an Edwardian novel about life inside of a landscape portrait." -- Chris Northington, trying out his best pitch for a publisher

Cover art by Microsoft® Word 2004 for Mac -- Version 11.3.5 (070413)