By CRISTINA ROUVALIS, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The repo man has braved gunfire, faced down hulking Harley riders and calmed farmers who threatened to throw him into a manure spreader.Occasionally Harry Serena retreats empty-handed. But at 2:31 a.m. on a recent Monday, he pounces on his prey -- a 2003 blue Chevy Trailblazer, parked in a lot outside a Pittsburgh-area apartment complex.

Moving back home after graduation no longer a no-noBy Cristina Rouvalis, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteLaptop in hand, Bobby Franklin moves about his room at this parent's home in Plum, Pa, a suburb of Pittsburgh. A recent graduate of Clarion University, Franklin says his dream job would be in pharmaceutical sales.

Chris Chojnicki was always one flight from a family fix. She would think nothing of flying to Chicago and Atlanta and California four or five times a year to see her aunts and cousins for reunions and graduations and birthday parties.But now, the Pittsburgh woman vows never to board another commercial airplane because of the expense and the sheer hassle of flying.

Every harried mother and father knows the logistical headaches of taking their children to assorted soccer practices, gymnastics class, day camps and on and on.

Every short story in Jhumpa Lahiri's latest book, "Unaccustomed Earth" (Knopf; $25), is a marvel.Lahiri, a young Indian-American writer, won the Pulitzer Prize for her first book, a short-story collection, "The Interpreter of Maladies," before writing the novel "The Namesake."

In 2000, readers were entranced by the simple elegance of "Jim the Boy," Tony Earley's best-selling novel about a precocious 10-year-old boy growing up in Aliceville, N.C., with his widowed mother and three bachelor uncles.

Jason Eickmeyer was a 15-year-old New Jersey sophomore the night he said he had sex with his gym teacher. From that moment on, he counted the days until he would be old enough to marry her.Male classmates at Hammonton High School who heard the rumors would nudge him on the shoulder, he said, and give him a knowing smile. "I got respect," he said.

Think Audrey Hepburn in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," the vision of elegant chic in opera gloves and a long sleeveless dress.