e-book of short-short stories, Red Willow Digital Press, 2011. Collaboration with collage artist Lou Beach: an embarrassing interview with a nude skier, a bicycle made of iron, a piano-loving gangster, a sinister birthday party magician, an alcoholic ape in denial, a mail-order bride, the end of the world, and fifteen other multimedia eye-poppers and gusset-busters. HEAR the imprisoned schoolteacher rationalize her torture of the troublemaker named Billy! SEE the shopping mall Santa with a disfigured face! LISTEN to the musical stylings of a modern-day political troubador! WITNESS the unfolding madness of the diarizing ichthyologist! 21 stories and weird pictures in all.

Novel, Graywolf Press, 2009. A man buys a plot of land in upstate New York, only to discover that it contains an abandoned castle, and the secrets of his past. Buy audiobook from Iambik.com!

The New York Times Book Review: "A terrific story, dire and confusing and convincing...it richly deserves to be read."

The Dallas Morning News: "Clever and insightful, [Castle] compels the reader to solve a series of riddles that reveal the emotional rationale underpinning our most despicable behavior."

Stories, Granta Books, 2005, and Graywolf Press, 2009. 100 short shorts. See the Inverse Room page for the companion CD of the same title.

The Guardian: "These are stories about connections - sometimes meaningful, but often mysterious, or conjured out of random coincidence in our efforts to make moral sense of the world...intriguing and graceful."

Novel, W. W. Norton and Granta, 2003. A frenetic bildungsroman about a doomed mailman.Read an excerpt in Granta 82.

Irving Mailin, Review of Contemporary Fiction: "The secret of this extraordinary work is that letters--written words--are our salvation. Mailman is, finally, a radiant mirror of the days of our lives--a triumphant work of art."

David Henderson, Library Journal: "Like Joseph Heller's John Yossarian and Ken Kesey's Randle McMurphy, Alfred Lippincott, Lennon's titular mailman, is destined to become one of the great characters in American literature... This is black comedy at its best."

Novel, Henry Holt and Granta, 2001. After the Second World War, a man leaves his home on a Great Plains sheep ranch. He returns to chaos and despair, and decides to devote himself to setting things right.

The New York Times: "The kind of book that steals slowly into the reader's sympathy...An utterly convincing evocation of hard lives...impressive."

Publisher's Weekly: "A terse and haunting story that speaks of the inescapable bonds of blood, the ineluctable hold of the land and the healing powers of work and solitude."

Novel, Riverhead Books and Granta, 1999. A failed installation artist inherits his father's syndicated comic strip, and is forced to come to terms with his dysfunctional family.

Salon: "Lennon entertainingly sends up celebrity culture and the new children-of-celebrity culture, but his most substantial achievement is his three-dimensional portraits of Tim and Pierce...The novel...makes large what the real funnies make small."

The New Yorker: "Psychologically nuanced, richly detailed, and unexpectedly comic."

Novel, Riverhead Books and Granta, 1997. The lives of five people are changed by a plane crash in a small Montana town. Winner of Barnes & Noble's 1997 Discover Great New Writers Award.

San Francisco Chronicle: "A memorable first novel...Lennon's lushly descriptive style speaks directly and metaphorically at the same time.... A voice with real promise."

Publisher's Weekly: "[An] ambitious, elegiac debut...[Lennon] paints a world tinged with loss, adeptly showing us sentiments left unspoken, relationships forever left dangling, silent moments of grief...lucid and graceful even in his characters' darkest hours."

Anthology, Word Riot Press, 2010. Stories, poems, essays, and other writings about New Jersey. Features a new JRL story, "Mark," along with work by Robert Pinsky and Joyce Carol Oates. 

Anthology, Serpent's Tail, 2009. A collection of stories inspired by Sonic Youth songs, including the JRL story "Death To Our Friends." Also featuring Mary Gaitskill and Katherine Dunn. 

Anthology, The Free Press, 2008. A collection of stories about new superheroes, including the JRL story "The Rememberer," the story that inspired the CBS crime drama Unforgettable. Also featuring Jim Shepard, Cary Holladay, Graham Joyce. 

Anthology, Social Disease, 2007. A collection of really short stories, including one of JRL's--"Mikeworld," from the Pieces For The Left Hand collection. Also featuring Rick Moody, Steve Almond, Steve Aylett. 

Anthology, Flambard Press, 2006. Stories inspired by the journals of Chekhov and Carver. JRL went with Chekhov. Also featuring David Means, Andrew Crumley, Ali Smith.

Anthology, 826 Valencia, 2005. An anthology of short fiction, combined with writing prompts and assignments for teenagers. Features one of JRL's twenty-second stories from McSweeney's.