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The highly acclaimed author of Landslide delivers “[an] intricate, delicate-as-rice-paper novel'(O, The Oprah Magazine) about an ex-pat in China who embarks on a journey that takes her into the darkest corners of addiction, marriage, and motherhood. When Elsey's husband, Lukas, hands her a brochure for a weeklong mountain retreat, she knows he is really giving her an ultimatum: Go, or we're done. Once a successful painter, Elsey set down roots in China after falling in love with Lukas. Now, with two young daughters and unable to find a balance between her identities as artist, mother, and wife, Elsey fills her days worrying, drinking, and descending into boredom and unhappiness. So she agrees to go. There, she meets a group of men and women who will forever alter the way she understands herself and her marriage. Written in a voice at once wry, sensual, blunt, and hypnotic, Elsey Come Home is a modern odyssey and a quietly dynamic portrait of contemporary womanhood.

On April 10, 1994, PBS stations nationwide will air the first episode of a lavish six-part Masterpiece Theatre production of Eliot's brilliant work, Middlemarch, hosted by Russell Baker and produced by Louis Marks. The Modern Library is pleased to offer this official companion edition, complete with tie-in art and printed on acid-free paper. Unabridged.

The Ransomes had been burgled.'Robbed,'Mrs. Ransome said.'Burgled,'Mr. Ransome corrected. Premises were burgled; persons were robbed. Mr. Ransome was a solicitor by profession and thought words mattered. Though'burgled'was the wrong word too. Burglars select; they pick; they remove one item and ignore others. There is a limit to what burglars can take: they seldom take easy chairs, for example, and even more seldom settees. These burglars did. They took everything.This swift-moving comic fable will surprise you with its concealed depths. When the sedate Ransomes return from the opera to find their Notting Hill flat stripped absolutely bare—down to the toilet paper off the roll (a hard-to-find shade of forget-me-not blue)—they face a dilemma: Who are they without the things they've spent a lifetime accumulating? Suddenly the world is full of unlimited and frightening possibility. But just as they begin adjusting to this giddy freedom, a newfound interest in sex, and a lack of comfy chairs, a surreal reversal of events causes them to question their assumptions yet again. The Ransomes'bafflement is the reader's delight. Alan Bennett's gentle but scathing wit, unerring ear for dialogue, and sense of the absurd make The Clothes They Stood Up In a memorable exploration of where in life true riches lie.

'A great Russian novel…in the grand Russian tradition.'—Le FigaroRussian Gothic, a short and intense novel by Belgium-based Belorussian novelist Aleksandr Skorobogatov that, since its initial publication in Russia in 1991, has gone on to sell over a million copies worldwide and hailed as an early masterpiece of post-Soviet literature, eliciting comparisons to Gogol and Bulgakov. Russian Gothic is a dark tale of the descent into paranoia and violence of Nikolai, a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war. When a mysterious figure, Sergeant Bertrand, appears on his doorstep and starts insinuating that Nikolai's wife, Vera, may be having an affair, Nikolai's faith in his wife, the only person to stand by him after his return to civilian life, starts to crumble—with devastating consequences.Skorobogatov, the author of five critically acclaimed novels, has been published widely in Europe, but Russian Gothic is the first of his works to be translated into English. The UK edition was recently released by Old Street, garnering truly stellar reviews, including in the Telegraph (“thoroughly magnificent”) and The Sunday Times (“riveting”). Three decades after it was written, its complex portrait of grief, misogyny, violence—and love—is as fresh, shocking, and relevant as ever.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED A BEST BOOK BY PEOPLE AND PARADE • The New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had (“wonderfully immersive…deliciously absorbing”—NPR) returns with another brilliantly observed family drama in which the enduring, hard-won affection of a long marriage faces imminent derailment from events both past and present.“Infidelity, dysfunction, secrets – this family novel delivers.'—The New York Times •'Lombardo has such a fine eye for the weft and warp of a family's fabric.'—The Washington Post • “Witty and insightful...a powerful exploration of marriage, motherhood, and self.”–Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in ChemistrySame As It Ever Was showcases the consummate style, signature wit, and profound emotional intelligence that made The Most Fun We Ever Had one of the most beloved novels of the past decade. Featuring a memorably messy family and the multifaceted marriage at its heart, Lombardo's debut was dubbed “the literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler” (The Guardian) and hailed as “ambitious and brilliantly written” (Washington Post). In this remarkable follow-up—another elegant and tumultuous story in the tradition of Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, and Celeste Ng—Lombardo introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters, this time by way of her singularly complicated protagonist.Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things.She's unprepared, though, for what comes next: a surprise announcement from her straight-arrow son, an impending separation from her spikey teenaged daughter, and a seductive resurgence of the past, all of which threaten to draw her back into the patterns that had previously kept her on a razor's edge.Same As It Ever Was traverses the rocky terrain of real life, —exploring new avenues of maternal ambivalence, intergenerational friendship, and the happenstantial cause-and-effect that governs us all. Delving even deeper into the nature of relationships—how they grow, change, and sometimes end—Lombardo proves herself a true and definitive cartographer of the human heart and asserts herself among the finest novelists of her generation.

“An insightful, riveting study of marriage.” —People From the bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes, a masterful and “absorbing” (The New York Times) novel about a couple in a small town navigating the complexities of marriage, family, and longing.Malcolm Gephardt, handsome and gregarious longtime bartender at the Half Moon, has always dreamed of owning a bar. When his boss finally retires, Malcolm stretches to buy the place. He sees unquantifiable magic and potential in the Half Moon and hopes to transform it into a bigger success, but struggles to stay afloat. His smart and confident wife, Jess, has devoted herself to her law career. After years of trying for a baby, she is facing the idea that motherhood may not be in the cards for her. Like Malcolm, she feels her youth beginning to slip away and wonders how to reshape her future. “A quick and impactful read that will stay with you long after you finish it” (theSkimm), The Half Moon takes place over the course of one week when Malcolm learns shocking news about Jess, a patron of the bar goes missing, and a blizzard hits the town of Gillam, trapping everyone in place. With a deft eye and generous spirit, Mary Beth Keane explores the disappointments and unexpected consolations of midlife, the many forms forgiveness can take, the complicated intimacy of small-town living, and what it means to be a family.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The New York Times best-selling author of The Nix is back with a poignant and witty novel about a modern marriage and the bonds that keep people together. Mining the absurdities of contemporary society, Wellness reimagines the love story with a healthy dose of insight, irony, and heart.'A stunning novel about the stories that we tell about our lives and our loves, and how we sustain relationships throughout time—it's beyond remarkable, both funny and heartbreaking, sometimes on the same page.” —NPRWhen Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the gritty'90s Chicago art scene, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in the thriving underground scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to suburban married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter the often-baffling pursuits of health and happiness from polyamorous would-be suitors to home-renovation hysteria. For the first time, Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize each other, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process, Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.

A must-have new edition of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, featuring a cover illustrated by Alison Bechdel, the New York Times bestselling author of Fun Home, and a new foreword by Patricia LockwoodA Penguin Classics Graphic Deluxe EditionEvery summer, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey and their eight children vacation on Scotland's idyllic Isle of Skye, surrounded by artist friends. They expect these summers will go on forever, but with the arrival of World War I, they are forced to reckon with change, loss, and time's unstoppable march, before making, years later, the long-awaited return to Skye and to its towering lighthouse. An intimate, impressionistic meditation on memory, grief, the brutalities of war, and the tensions of domestic life, revolutionary for its use of stream of consciousness and shifting points of view, and infused with a singular poetic essence, To the Lighthouse is both a landmark in modernist writing and one of the greatest literary works of the twentieth century.This edition is collated from all known proofs, manuscripts, and impressions to reflect the author's intentions, and includes a catalog of emendations and an introduction by the distinguished biographer and critic Hermione Lee.For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

An influential twentieth-century novel admired for its philosophical and psychological introspection The Ramsay family is on holiday on the Isle of Sky in Scotland. As the family and their guests decide on whether or not to visit a nearby lighthouse, Virginia Woolf spins a tale that focuses on the intricate web of family life and the conflict that occurs between genders.

Virginia Woolf's classic modernist novel, To the Lighthouse, draws from her own life and experiences.Hailed as one of the greatest works of modernist fiction, Virginia Woolf's semi-autobiographical novel about the Ramsay family explores the themes of perspective, interpersonal relationships, and the complexity of human experience. Woolf's use of shifting points of view in the narrative highlights how each person sees and experiences events in their own way. As conflict and grief impact the Ramsays throughout their time on Scotland's Isle of Skye, the reader is pulled into Woolf's own life.

2022 PEN Translation Award FINALIST In this masterful novel, author Juli Zeh skillfully shifts away from the conventional tale of a middle-aged, middle-class father out for a New Year's Day bike ride to an unexpectedly dark, psychological family drama. Lanzarote on New Year's Day: Henning is cycling up the steep path to Femés. As he struggles against the wind and the gradient he takes stock of his life. He has a job, a wife, two children—yet hardly recognizes himself anymore. Panic attacks have been pouncing on him like demons. When he finally reaches the pass in utter exhaustion, a mysterious coincidence unveils a repressed yet vivid memory, plunging him back into childhood and the traumatic event that almost cost him and his sister their lives. In this masterful novel, bestselling author Juli Zeh skillfully turns a New Year's Day bike ride into an unexpectedly dark, psychological family drama.

This clever and witty debut novel about the unexpected consequences of one woman's attempt to exert control over her life by adhering to a strict wellness routine is “the kind of book you devour in a day or two…sexy and funny, but also very perceptive” (BuzzFeed).Kit and David were college sweethearts. Now married and in their thirties, they live in Kit's childhood home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. While David has a successful career, jetting off on work trips to exciting destinations, Kit is stuck in a loop. She keeps quitting her job managing her sister's bakery to seek a more ambitious profession, but fear of failure always brings her back to Sweet Cheeks. Kit finds a fraught solace in cycling through fad diets, which David, in his efforts to be supportive, follows along with her. Their latest program is the Radiant Regimen, an intense cleanse, and Kit is optimistic about embarking on a new chapter of healthy eating and self-control. Hungry in more ways than one, she soon falls into a flirtation with a carpenter named Matt who is building new shelves for the bakery kitchen. Unable to resist their mutual attraction, Kit and Matt soon begin a passionate affair. Kit suppresses her guilt by obsessing over her diet, pushing herself in greater extremes. Told in precise, intimate detail, Cheat Day is “an incredibly likable novel of hungers controlled and liberated, and marriage's gray areas” (Booklist) that explores monogamy versus monotony, deprivation versus indulgence, and limitations of modern wellness.

A NOVEL OF LOVE AND LOSS FROM BESTSELLING AND PRIZEWINNING AUTHOR JOYCE CAROL OATESAmid a starkly beautiful but uncanny landscape in New Mexico, a married couple from Cambridge, MA takes residency at a distinguished academic institute. When the husband is stricken with a mysterious illness, misdiagnosed at first, their lives are uprooted and husband and wife each embarks upon a nightmare journey. At thirty-seven, Michaela faces the terrifying prospect of widowhood - and the loss of Gerard, whose identity has greatly shaped her own. In vividly depicted scenes of escalating suspense, Michaela cares desperately for Gerard in his final days as she comes to realize that her love for her husband, however fierce and selfless, is not enough to save him and that his death is beyond her comprehension. A love that refuses to be surrendered at death—is this the blessing of a unique married love, or a curse that must be exorcized? Part intimately detailed love story, part horror story rooted in real life, BREATHE is an exploration of hauntedness rooted in the domesticity of marital love, as well as our determination both to be faithful to the beloved and to survive the trauma of loss.

Weddings always have their fair share of drama, but this one comes on the heels of the highly controversial 2009 Iranian election and ensuing Green Wave protests.When the matriarch of Sarah's family arranged her marriage to Ali, it was with the intention of uniting two compatible families. However, as the 2009 election becomes contentious, political differences emerge and Sarah's conservative family tries to call off the wedding. Sarah and Ali, however, have fallen in love and, against the wishes of their parents, insist on going through with the marriage.Sarah's cousin, Sadegh, is a staunch supporter of the government and a member of the Basij, the volunteer militia tasked with arresting protestors and shutting down speech against the regime. Meanwhile, Ali's sister, Azar, is an activist, a divorce attorney, and a passionate Green Wave supporter, trying to enact change in a way that many Iranians see as inflammatory. When Sarah impulsively shelters a protestor in their car on the drive home from her wedding, she sets off a chain of events that can either unmask the government's brutality or ruin them all.Sarah, Sadegh, and Azar's stories weave together in an unflinching, humorous, and at times terrifying story that demonstrates that, even as the world is falling apart around us, choices matter.

'Holding On To Nothing is a resonant song of the South, all whiskey, bluegrass, Dolly Parton, tobacco fields, and women who know better but still fall for the lowdown men whom they know will disappoint them.'—Lauren Groff, National Book Award finalist author of Fates and Furies and Florida Lucy Kilgore has her bags packed for her escape from her rural Tennessee upbringing, but a drunken mistake forever tethers her to the town and one of its least-admired residents, Jeptha Taylor, who becomes the father of her child. Together, these two young people work to form a family, though neither has any idea how to accomplish that, and the odds are against them in a place with little to offer other than bluegrass music, tobacco fields, and a Walmart full of beer and firearms for the hunting season. Their path is harrowing, but Lucy and Jeptha are characters to love, and readers will root for their success in a novel so riveting that no one will want to turn out the light until they know whether this family will survive. In luminous prose, debut novelist Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne brings us a present-day Appalachian story in the tradition of Lee Smith, Silas House, and Ron Rash, cast without sentiment or cliché, but with a genuine and profound understanding of the place and its people. New edition features a readers'guide in the back of the book with questions for discussion and an interview with the author.

'Ethan Frome'was published in 1911 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in turn-of-the-century New England in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. Ethan Frome is a man with dreams and desires that end in an ironic turn of events. The narrator tells the story based on an account from observations at Frome's house when he had to stay there during a winter storm. Ethan's character is one that comes full circle, moving from silent desire, to action, to quiet submission ordered by life's circumstances.

'An unabashedly smart and affecting portrait of the strains of a marriage.'—Ayana Mathis, author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie Meet Ivan and Prue: a married couple - both experts in language and communication - who nevertheless cannot seem to communicate with each otherIvan is a tightly wound philosophy professor whose reverence for logic and order governs not only his academic interests, but also his closest relationships. His wife, Prue, is quite the opposite: a pioneer in the emerging field of biolinguistics, she is bold and vibrant, full of life and feeling. Thus far, they have managed to weather their differences. But lately, an odd distance has settled in between them. Might it have something to do with the arrival of the college's dashing but insufferable new writer-in-residence, whose novel Prue always seems to be reading?Into this delicate moment barrels Ivan's unstable father-in-law, Frank, in town to hear Prue deliver a lecture on birdsong that is set to cement her tenure application. But the talk doesn't go as planned, unleashing a series of crises that force Ivan to finally confront the problems in his marriage, and to begin to fight - at last - for what he holds dear.A dazzlingly insightful and entertaining novel about the limitations of language, the fragility of love, and the ways we misunderstand each other and ourselves, The Study of Animal Languages marks the debut of a brilliant new voice in fiction.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Captures the angst and anxiety of modern life with... astute observations about interactions between the haves and have-nots, and the realities of life among the long-married.”—USA TodayA provocative novel that explores what it means to be a mother, a wife, and a woman at a moment of reckoning, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Miller's Valley and Still Life with Bread Crumbs. Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life—except when there's a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora's dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness. The owners watch one another's children grow up. They use the same handyman. They trade gossip and gripes, and they maneuver for the ultimate status symbol: a spot in the block's small parking lot. Then one morning, Nora returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the neighborhood, and the enviable dead-end block turns into a potent symbol of a divided city. The fault lines begin to open: on the block, at Nora's job, and especially in her marriage. Praise for Alternate Side“[Anna] Quindlen's quietly precise evaluation of intertwined lives evinces a keen understanding of and appreciation for universal human frailties.”—Booklist (starred review)“Exquisitely rendered... [Quindlen] is one of our most astute chroniclers of modern life.... [Alternate Side] has an almost documentary feel, a verisimilitude that's awfully hard to achieve.”—The New York Times Book Review“An exceptional depiction of complex characters—particularly their weaknesses and uncertainties—and the intricacies of close relationships... Quindlen's provocative novel is a New York City drama of fractured marriages and uncomfortable class distinctions.”—Publishers Weekly

Intelligent and deeply felt, Feast Days follows a young wife who relocates with her financier husband to São Paulo -- a South American megacity that impresses and unsettles, conceals and erupts. Here in her new home, she reckons with the twenty-first century as she encounters crime, protests, refugees gentrification, and the collision of art and commerce, while confronting the crisis slowly building inside her own marriage. In stylish prose and with piercing wit, Ian MacKenzie tells the story of Emma, a young woman who has moved from New York to Brazil just as massive demonstrations against the government are breaking out across the country amid growing economic inequality. Emma has come to Brazil for her husband's career, with no job prospects of her own, a weak grasp of the language, and a deep ambivalence about having a child. Her early days in Sao Paulo are listless but privileged; she dines at high-end restaurants, tutors wealthy Brazilians in English, and observes the city she now calls home. But when Emma volunteers at a local church to assist refugees and grows more deeply connected to the people she meets in the course of her days, she finds herself unable to resist the tug of Sao Paulo's political and social unrest. As the country moves seemingly closer to a breaking point, so does Emma's marriage, as she and her husband can no longer ignore the silent, tectonic shifts beneath the surface of their relationship. Feast Days is a sharply observed story of expatriate life, as well as a meditation on the hidden costs of modern living and how easily our belief systems can collapse around us.'Devastating, funny and wise, it's among the best novels I know about the fate of American innocence abroad.'-Garth Greenwell

A searing portrait of suburbia, friendship, and family strained by a devotion to false appearances. In an idyllic suburb, four young families quickly form a neighborhood clique, their friendships based on little more than the ages of their children and a shared sense of camaraderie. When one of the couples, Paige and Gene Edwards, adopt a four-year-old girl from Russia, the group's loyalty and morality is soon called into question. Are the Edwards unkind to their new daughter? Or is she a difficult child with hidden destructive tendencies? As the seams of the group friendship slowly unravel, neighbor Nicole Westerhof finds herself drawn further into the life of the adopted girl, forcing Nicole to re-examine the deceptive nature of her own family ties, and her complicity in the events unfolding around her.

A gripping novel about two young married couples--expectant parents and new friends--whose lives collide in a pile-up of deceits and indiscretionsIt was the exhilaration of new parenthood that first united Michael and Paul, outside the Brooklyn hospital where their wives, Rebecca and Jenny, had exiled them from the delivery room. For Paul, though, tragedy swiftly followed that euphoria. Hoping to speed his and Jenny's recovery, he turns to Michael for a favor, unwittingly kindling the spark of connection between these couples into the affair that will blow them apart.One year later, on the same morning that the catastrophes of their personal lives come to an explosive head, a mysterious crisis in Midtown Manhattan all but shuts down the city, leaving both men stranded--Michael at the northernmost tip of the island and Paul in a dark subway tunnel under the East River. Each must make the arduous trek home through record-breaking heat, nervously eyeing the thin plume of smoke above the skyline, though it's their private turmoils that loom largest. Told in the alternating voices of these charismatic but deeply flawed men, Little Disasters deftly cuts between the suspense of the citywide disaster and the history of secrets, lies, and losses that has brought these four intertwined lives to the brink. Smart, unsparing, and bitingly funny, Randall Klein's debut is an engrossing story of the bonds of love and family--and our unending urges to test them, even when we need them most.

With wicked wit and savage glee, British novelist Fay Weldon “breaks taboos like tape at a marathon” (Los Angeles Times). Perhaps best known for her “small, mad masterpiece,” The Life and Loves of a She Devil, Man Booker Prize nominee Fay Weldon has been writing some of the boldest, funniest satirical novels for over half a century (The Washington Post Book World). In her mid-eighties, she's penned a scathing sequel, The Death of a She Devil, “a brilliant black comedy” (The Mail on Sunday). Weldon's take-no-prisoners milieu is often the war between the sexes; she “[points] up the mad underside of our sexual politics with a venomous accuracy for which wit is far too mild a word” (The New York Times Book Review). The Life and Loves of a She DevilA New York Times Notable Book “With infectious, wicked glee,” Weldon tells the story of Ruth, whose husband, Bobbo, has fallen in love with Mary Fisher, a bestselling romance novelist who lives in a high tower overlooking the sea (Chicago Tribune). Mary is petite, dainty, and lovely. Ruth is not. When Bobbo moves out, Ruth decides to orchestrate an elaborate and masterful revenge. Weldon's “powerfully funny and oddly powerful” novel was made into a film with Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr (The Washington Post Book World). “A scintillating, mind-boggling, vicarious thrill for any reader who has ever fantasized dishing out retribution for one wrong or another.” —The New York Times Book Review The Hearts and Lives of Men: In Weldon's “imaginative work of Dickensian scope” set in 1960s London, Clifford Wexford and Helen Lally meet at a party and fall passionately in love (Los Angeles Times). But their baby, Nell, isn't even a year old when their marriage unravels. Divorce quickly follows, and so begins a battle for Nell's care and affection. Helen remarries; Clifford has affairs—and something quite remarkable happens to little Nell, as an ill-conceived kidnapping plot sets her on a series of picaresque adventures in this modern-day fairy tale. “Wry, gutsy and loaded with fun.” —The New York Times PraxisShortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Praxis Duveen is a survivor. At five years old, in 1920s England, she is still innocent, the product of an unstable mother and a father who abandoned her and Hypatia, her half-crazy sister. As the decades fly by, Praxis experiences many incarnations, from prostitute to rape victim, wife to adulteress, and eventually becomes the accidental leader of an international women's movement. Now, from her dingy basement apartment where she's attempting to write a memoir, Praxis recounts her remarkable journey—peppered with more than a few detours along the way. “Weldon's most directly feminist novel... A narrative that convinces, horrifies, and entertains.” —Library Journal

'Ulysses'takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904, also known as Bloomsday, it sets the characters and incidents of the Odyssey of Homer in modern Dublin and represents Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, and contrasts them with their lofty models. The book explores various areas of Dublin life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Nevertheless, the book is also an affectionately detailed study of the city. In Ulysses, Joyce employs stream of consciousness, parody, jokes, and virtually every other literary technique to present his characters. Many consider it the best novel of the twentieth century. It is powerfully written, a book for the ages.

Set just before World War I, The Good Soldier chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two seemingly perfect couples. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks, it also makes use of the device of the unreliable narrator as the main character gradually reveals a version of events that is quite different from what the introduction leads you to believe. The novel was loosely based on two incidents of adultery and on Ford's messy personal life.

'Rarely has a marriage so come alive in a work of fiction... So intense, beautifully written, shining with'felt life,'it is truly gripping—riveting.'—Joyce Carol Oates Abigail McCormick and Ray Stark are both poets, married nearly twenty–five years in what has always been a passionate relationship despite deep class differences. Ray is the son of West Virginia coal miners and was abused as a child—but now he is a distinguished poet with a part–time position at Brown. Abby grew up in San Francisco's posh Pacific Heights and, having abandoned poetry, she spends her energy on a new teaching position at UC Berkeley. Abby's decision to accept the post sets the stage for Ray to stray, especially as he struggles with a heart condition.He's tortured by his affair with the graduate student he's fallen in love with, but is determined to stay married—he fights to get over Tory for years. A despairing Abby finds solace in her return to riding horses and writing poems, but as she suffers privately, she becomes dependent on sleeping pills and alcohol. Ray's health worsens—proves nearly fatal—and another cross–country move threatens to push them further apart. Alternating seamlessly between Ray's and Abby's perspectives, The Use of Fame is a gripping exploration of how closeness and despair can warp a lover's perception.

A couple's life and love are destroyed when they win the lottery in this tragic tale of turn-of-the-century San Francisco. McTeague and Trina are in love, and with the modest income from McTeague's dentistry office, their needs are few. But when Trina wins a small fortune from a lottery ticket, jealousy and distrust begin to unravel their happy home. As tension erupts between McTeague and Trina's cousin Marcus, Trina's impulse to save her winnings slowly gives way to a pathological obsession with hoarding money. Betrayed and destitute, the couple embarks on a journey down a path of violence, theft, and murder. Considered transgressive for its brutality and sordid subject matter upon first publication in 1899, McTeague has since served as the basis for the films Greed (1924) by Erich von Stroheim and Slow Burn (2000), starring Minnie Driver and James Spader. Widely acclaimed as Frank Norris's masterpiece, the novel was hailed as “a literary masterpiece” by the New York Times. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

The bestselling novel of financial speculation in the Progressive Era from the author of McTeague. Curtis Jadwin had to compete with other suitors to secure his wife's hand in marriage, but after a year of marital bliss, he finds himself captivated by another: the high-stakes competition at the Chicago Board of Trade. At first merely dabbling in wheat speculation, Jadwin soon becomes obsessed with making deals and the roaring excitement of the trading pit. In pursuit of ever greater wealth and power, Jadwin devotes his days and nights to the pit, recklessly gambling with the livelihoods of farmers he will never meet. Meanwhile, his wife is increasingly neglected and resorts to the companionship of a former suitor. But while his marriage is on the precipice of ruin, Jadwin is on the verge of his greatest win: cornering the wheat market. And while his play destroys the fortunes of many men, including his best friend, it is only when his own fortune crumbles that Jadwin will finally take stock of his life. The second standalone novel in Norris's planned Epic of the Wheat Trilogy, The Pit was published posthumously in 1902. A runaway bestseller and critical success, it was adapted into a Broadway play as well as the film A Corner in Wheat, directed by D. W. Griffith. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

The bestselling British novel about love, marriage, family, secrets, and how the power of faith can transform lives even in the midst of inconsolable loss After being paralyzed in a rugby accident, twenty-year-old, wheelchair-bound Lenny Barnes feels he has nothing left to live for and is putting his affairs in order before committing suicide. As lively Mazey Day celebrations take place in the Cornish town of Penzance, Lenny summons a parish priest to his home. Father Barnaby Johnson is shocked to discover that he has been called in not to comfort but to deliver last rites. Lenny's death will reverberate not only in Barnaby's life but in the lives of his family and those around them, from Barnaby's wife, Dorothy, to Modest Carlsson, a parishioner and former teacher whose affair with an underage student cost him his job, his marriage, and, quite possibly, his soul. Narrated in a nonlinear style from the characters'shifting perspectives and ages, this spellbinding, exquisitely crafted novel exposes the fault lines in relationships as it limns the consequences of our actions. The novel that author Patrick Gale describes as “an echo chamber” to his international bestseller Notes from an Exhibition, A Perfectly Good Man reveals another family in crisis and asks what it truly means to be good. This Richard & Judy Book Club pick is a story of warmth, wisdom, and compassion on crises of faith, the power of prayer, morality, and what it means to be a parent.

An electrifying New York Times bestselling novel about marriage and deceit that follows two couples on vacation in Siracusa, a town on the coast of Sicily, where the secrets they have hidden from one another are exposed and relationships are unraveled. With her inimitable psychological astuteness and uncanny understanding of the human heart, Ephron delivers a powerful meditation on marriage, friendship, and the meaning of travel. Set on the sun-drenched coast of the Ionian Sea, Siracusa unfolds with the pacing of a psychological thriller and delivers an unexpected final act that none will see coming. One of People Magazine's Top 10 Books • A Washington Post Bestseller • A Los Angeles Times Bestseller • A USA Today Bestseller • One of Vulture's 100 Greatest Beach Books Ever • A People Magazine Summer Reading Pick • One of Elle, InStyle, and Marie Claire's Best of July • A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016 (Fiction)

A FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDONE OF THE ATLANTIC'S GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS OF THE PAST 100 YEARSNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERNAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, TIME, THE SEATTLE TIMES, MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, SLATE, LIBRARY JOURNAL, KIRKUS, AND MANY MORE“Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and Fates and Furies is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers – with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout.” —The New York Times Book Review (cover review) From the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Florida, Matrix, and the highly-anticipated The Vaster Wilds: an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception. Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.

“From aide to nanny and housekeeper... Paolo Giordano examines this unusual relationship in the context of one household of three.... Spare, elegant.”–The New York Times “Like Family... demands to be savored... Giordano's emphasis on how we choose to live and love offers subtle hope that our decisions actually matter.”—NPR.orgFrom the author of Heaven and Earth, an exquisite portrait of marriage, adulthood, and the meaning of family Paolo Giordano's prizewinning debut novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers, catapulted the young Italian author into the literary spotlight. His new novel features his trademark character-driven narrative and intimate domestic setting that first made him an international sensation. When Mrs. A. first enters the narrator's home, his wife, Nora, is experiencing a difficult pregnancy. First as their maid and nanny, then their confidante, this older woman begins to help her employers negotiate married life, quickly becoming the glue in their small household. She is the steady, maternal influence for both husband and wife, and their son, Emanuele, whom she protects from his parents'expectations and disappointments. But the family's delicate fabric comes undone when Mrs. A. is diagnosed with cancer. Moving seamlessly between the past and present, Giordano highlights with remarkable precision the joy of youth and the fleeting nature of time. An elegiac, heartrending, and deeply personal portrait of marriage and the people we choose to call family, this is a jewel of a novel—short, intense, and unforgettable.

Dale Peck's second novel offers a searing, nuanced portrait of a marriage across the decades. Beatrice and Henry—the parents of the protagonist of Peck's debut novel, Martin and John—are first drawn together when the teenaged Henry is battling a brain tumor that he believes will soon claim his life. But forty years later they're still a couple, in a story that moves from Long Island to the Finger Lakes of upstate New York, and from love to hate and back again. Peck bisects the story of Henry and Beatrice's marriage with a stunning 50-page memoir about his own father, mother, and three stepmothers, which combines with the primary narrative to build an unforgettable and deeply moving book about the ways that family both creates and destroys us.The Law of Enclosures is the second volume of Gospel Harmonies, a series of seven stand-alone books (four have been written) that follow the character of John in various guises as he attempts to navigate the uneasy relationship between the self and the postmodern world.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE AND THE HUFFINGTON POST • Features an exclusive conversation between Julia Pierpont and Lena DunhamFor fans of Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen, Lorrie Moore, and Curtis Sittenfeld, Among the Ten Thousand Things is a dazzling first novel, a portrait of an American family on the cusp of irrevocable change, and a startlingly original story of love and time lost. Jack Shanley is a well-known New York artist, charming and vain, who doesn't mean to plunge his family into crisis. His wife, Deb, gladly left behind a difficult career as a dancer to raise the two children she adores. In the ensuing years, she has mostly avoided coming face-to-face with the weaknesses of the man she married. But then an anonymously sent package arrives in the mail: a cardboard box containing sheaves of printed emails chronicling Jack's secret life. The package is addressed to Deb, but it's delivered into the wrong hands: her children's. With this vertiginous opening begins a debut that is by turns funny, wise, and indescribably moving. As the Shanleys spin apart into separate orbits, leaving New York in an attempt to regain their bearings, fifteen-year-old Simon feels the allure of adult freedoms for the first time, while eleven-year-old Kay wanders precariously into a grown-up world she can't possibly understand. Writing with extraordinary precision, humor, and beauty, Julia Pierpont has crafted a timeless, hugely enjoyable novel about the bonds of family life—their brittleness, and their resilience. Praise for Among the Ten Thousand Things“A luscious, smart summer novel... by a blazingly talented young author.”—The New York Times Book Review “This book is one of the funniest, and most emotionally honest, I've read in a long time.”—Jonathan Safran Foer “Obsessively compelling... emotionally sophisticated... Among the Ten Thousand Things rises above [other novels] for its imagined structure, sentence-by-sentence punch, and pure humanity.”—Vanity Fair “Gripping... Pierpont brings this family of four to life in sharply observed detail.... An acute observer of social comedy, Ms. Pierpont has a keen eye for the absurd.”—The Wall Street Journal “Pierpont's language is heart-stopping.... Between Pierpont's literary finesse and her captivating characters, [Among the Ten Thousand Things] reads like a page-turner.”—Entertainment Weekly (grade: A) “A twisty, gripping story—that packs an emotional wallop.”—O: The Oprah Magazine“There are going to be as many ingenious twists and turns in this literary novel as there are in a top-notch work of suspense like Gone Girl.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air“Tender, delicately perceptive... Pierpont's voice is wry and confident, and she is a fine anthropologist of New York life.”—The Washington Post“Pierpont displays a precocious gift for language and observation.... She captures the minutiae of loneliness that pushes us away from each other and sometimes brings us back.”—San Francisco Chronicle

A profound examination of the mysteries of memory and perception from one of the twentieth century's most admired literary artists The train races from New York to Boston. For Andrew Cather, it is much too fast. He will return home three days early, and he is both terrified and intrigued by what he may find there. He pictures himself unlocking the door to his quiet Cambridge house, padding silently through its darkened halls, and finally discovering the thing he both fears and yearns to see: his wife in the arms of another man. Cather knows that what he finds in Cambridge may destroy his life, yet finally set him free. A masterful portrait of an average man at the edge of a shocking precipice, Great Circle is a triumph of psychological realism. One of Sigmund Freud's favorite novels, it is a probing exploration of the secrets of consciousness.

Edith Newbold Jones was born in New York on January 24, 1862. Born into wealth, this background of privilege gave her a wealth of experience to eventually, after several false starts, produce many works based on it culminating in her Pulitzer Prize winning novel ‘The Age Of Innocence'. Marriage to Edward Robbins Wharton, who was 12 years older in 1885 seemed to offer much and for some years they travelled extensively. After some years it was apparent that her husband suffered from acute depression and so the travelling ceased and they retired to The Mount, their estate designed by Edith. By 1908 his condition was said to be incurable and prior to divorcing Edward in 1913 she began an affair, in 1908, with Morton Fullerton, a Times journalist, who was her intellectual equal and allowed her writing talents to push forward and write the novels for which she is so well known. Acknowledged as one of the great American writers with novels such as Ethan Frome and the House of Mirth among many. Wharton also wrote many short stories, including ghost stories and poems which we are pleased to publish. Edith Wharton died of a stroke in 1937 at the Domaine Le Pavillon Colombe, her 18th-century house on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt.

One of literature's keenest social critics, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Edith Wharton weaves a tragic small-town tale of epic proportions in this masterful novella Physically disfigured and trapped in a loveless marriage to a sickly older woman, Ethan Frome is a broken man. He lives a desolate, impoverished life in the town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, bound by an unassailable sense of duty. But long ago, Ethan dreamed of something beyond his bleak and tedious New England existence. Once, he had dared to have hope for the future.Ethan Frome tells the wrenching story of a love destined not to be and a man mired in his own private hell. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

“A powerful, poetic, bawdily funny, and tenderly sad novel about class, about love, about drink, about poetics, about land, and about money—a few of the salient things that life and history are made of.”—O, The Oprah MagazineIn his highly acclaimed debut novel, Colin McAdam depicts the struggle between two men involved in building a city's future: developer Jerry McGuinty, blue collar, selfmade, a master craftsman, and Simon Struthers, a civil servant from a prominent, wealthy background who shapes land-use policy. Jerry has a blind spot for his alcoholic wife, and Simon moves between women, consumed by a frantic emptiness. When their two stories begin to intertwine, their lives and ambitions are set on a collision course. A richly observed story of family, class, love and the individual contributions we make to the bigness of the world, Some Great Thing is a powerful work from one of the most exciting voices of his generation.

Spending their first winter away from the city, an aging married couple finds renewed friendship and love in the New Hampshire hills Christina and Cornelius Chapman have spent their summers in Willard for years, shunning the city's hottest months in favor of New Hampshire's rocky, rolling hills. In Willard, Christina looks forward to spending time with Ellen, enjoying forest walks and the easy conversation that come with longstanding friendship. But while Christina and Cornelius move comfortably between country and city, Ellen and her husband, Nick, are bound to Willard—their working-class lives standing in stark contrast to the moneyed effortlessness of their friends. This summer, however, is different. Rather than moving back to the city once fall sets in, the Chapmans have decided to stay. Characters of all sorts populate the New England town, and through their first winter in Willard, narrated in part through Christina's journal entries, the friendship between Christina and Ellen deepens, as does the one between Christina and Cornelius. Beautifully written and warmly rendered, Kinds of Love is a heartfelt portrait of marriage, friendship, class, and aging set against a tranquil, small-town New Hampshire backdrop.

Every Promise is a subtle and beautifully realised tale about dependence and redemption. When Sarah leaves him—heartbroken by their inability to conceive—Pietro reverts to a younger self, increasingly unable to care for himself. Soon afterwards, Sarah confesses that she is pregnant from a casual encounter with another man. She comes to rely on Pietro's mother for support, leaving all three in a painful limbo, unable to move on or return to the way things were. Into the void falls Olmo, an old man haunted by memories of war. At first he provides a distraction, but when he asks Pietro to travel to Russia on his behalf, to right a wrong from his past, he offers this most troubled of young men the chance of a new beginning

'A classic for a reason. My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again.'— Greta GerwigThe authorized, original edition of one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century: a miraculous novel of family, love, war, and mortality, with a foreword from Eudora Welty. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and conflict between men and women.To the Lighthouse is made up of three powerfully charged visions into the life of the Ramsay family living in a summer house off the rocky coast of Scotland. There's the serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, their eight children, and assorted holiday guests. With the lighthouse excursion postponed, Woolf shows the small joys and quiet tragedies of everyday life that seemingly could go on forever.But as time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and together, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.A moving portrait in miniature of family life, To the Lighthouse also has profoundly universal implications, giving language to the silent space that separates people and the space that they transgress to reach each other.

In a captivating departure from the Deep South setting of his previous fiction, Steve Yarbrough now gives us a richly nuanced portrait of a marriage being reinvented in a small town in the Northeast, in his most surprising and compelling novel yet.When Kristin Stevens loses her administrative job in California's university system, she and her husband, Cal, relocate to Massachusetts. Kristin takes a position at a smaller, less prestigious college outside Boston and promptly becomes entangled in its delicate, overheated politics. Cal, whose musical talent is nothing more than a consuming avocation, spends his days alone, fixing up their new home. And as they settle into their early fifties, the two seem to exist in separate spheres entirely. At the same time, their younger neighbor Matt Drinnan watches his ex-wife take up with another man in his hometown, with only himself to blame. He and Kristin, both facing an acute sense of isolation, gravitate toward each other, at first in hope of a platonic confidant but then, inevitably, of something more. The Realm of Last Chances provides us with a subtle, moving exploration of relationships, loneliness and our convoluted attempts to reach out to one another.This ebook edition includes a reading group guide.

A novel that examines aging and marriage with sincerity and insightRupert and Gemma, an elderly couple still very much in love, know that death will inevitably come for one of them before taking the other, so they keep private journals to ensure that the survivor's mate will never truly be gone, living on instead through his or her words. Age is the narrative of Rupert and Gemma's lives: their similarities, their differences, and the ways in which the two are irreversibly entwined. Each writes of life's mundane events—social outings, errands, a quiet night at home—that assume wistful meaning when viewed through the lens of memory.

“Like most great comedy,” writes Darin Strauss in his Introduction, “Mr. Beluncle makes sport of the Stuffed Shirt, the Hypocritical Pious Gentleman, and the Tyrant, as well as the Big Spender–and all these descriptions fit a single character: Mr. Beluncle himself.” One of V. S. Pritchett's most enduring characters, Mr. Beluncle is narcissistic, sanctimonious, and self-indulgent, yet despite these flaws he is undeniably compelling. Readers who follow this quirky British furniture salesman on his seemingly ordinary escapades–shopping for ridiculously expensive houses, attending services at his peculiar church, presiding over a tumultuous family meal–are in for a delightful and disquieting ride. Poignant, hilarious, and utterly unforgettable Mr. Beluncle is an ideal introduction to one of the English language's most gifted authors.

The best-loved book by the writer whom Fran Lebowitz compared to the author of The Great Gatsby, calling him “the real F. Scott Fitzgerald” One of the great novels of small-town American life, Appointment in Samarra is John O'Hara's crowning achievement. In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.Brimming with wealth and privilege, jealousy and infidelity, O'Hara's iconic first novel is an unflinching look at the dark side of the American dream—and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence if a major American writer.

In the new novel from the author of Emily, Alone and Henry, Himself, a middle-age couple goes all in for love at a Niagara Falls casinoStewart O'Nan's thirteenth novel is another wildly original, bittersweet gem like his celebrated Last Night at the Lobster. Valentine's weekend, Art and Marion Fowler flee their Cleveland suburb for Niagara Falls, desperate to recoup their losses. Jobless, with their home approaching foreclosure and their marriage on the brink of collapse, Art and Marion liquidate their savings account and book a bridal suite at the Falls'ritziest casino for a second honeymoon. While they sightsee like tourists during the day, at night they risk it all at the roulette wheel to fix their finances-and save their marriage. A tender yet honest exploration of faith, forgiveness and last chances, The Odds is a reminder that love, like life, is always a gamble.

In the tradition of Sue Monk Kidd and Julia Glass comes a stirring and soulful novel about an American woman accused of murdering her husband in Africa and the series of events that led her to that point, compellingly told via the alternating perspectives of her four teenage daughters.Christina Meldrum has already won praise from critics and fans with her young adult novel Madapple, which was an ALA Best Book for Young Readers in 2009 and earned starred reviews across the board. Now, in Amaryllis in Blueberry, her first adult novel, she tells the gripping story of the seemingly ordinary Slepy family—who fled their Midwestern town to do missionary work in a small village Africa. Meldrum has been an aid worker in Africa, bringing an authenticity to this richly atmospheric novel which explores many universal themes including family, religion, and culture.Meet Dick, his wife Seena, and their four daughters, each named Mary: Mary Catherine, Mary Grace, Mary Tessa, and their youngest Amaryllis (aMARYillis). Seena has felt unloved and unvalued most of her adult life, so she escapes into her books, particularly Greek mythology, to satisfy her desire to find meaning. Her life has been built on secrets and lies and she wants to protect her daughters from the truth she knows will destroy their happy home. Mary Catherine seems to be the strong, faithful one, who in deference to St. Catherine, cuts off all of her hair, but she's also a lost soul who desperately needs love and attention. Mary Grace is the eldest and the most beautiful—the one who easily seduces but is also easily seduced, especially when she's faced with an exotic and fascinating culture so unlike her own. Mary Tessa is the inquisitive one who claims to be the most reliable when it comes to the facts of her mother's case, and then there's Amaryllis, who was born with an extrasensory gift of seeing things other can't see, of knowing when bad things are about to happen, and of telling when those who profess to know the truth are the biggest liars of them all….Opening with the dramatic scene of Seena on trial for murdering her husband Dick, this engrossing and lyrical novel flashes back to the year before her family left for missionary work in Africa—and how the buried secrets of their past came back to haunt and heal them all.

'Michael Kimball is a hero of contemporary fiction.'—Sam LipsyteA husband wakes up to find his wife has had a seizure during the night. His wife is rushed to a hospital where she lies in a coma. By day, the husband sits beside his wife and tries to think of ways to wake her up. The husband sleeps in the chair next to his wife's bedside dreaming that she will wake up. He wants to be able to take her back home.Michael Kimball is author of The Way the Family Got Away, Dear Everybody, and the forthcoming Ray.

East Coast transplants to small-town Oregon, Naomi and Scanlon Pratt are at the threshold of a new life. Scanlon has a position at the local university—teaching mass movements and domestic radicalism—and Naomi, a fragrance designer whose sense of smell has inexplicably vanished, is pregnant with their first child.For Scanlon, all of this is ideal, from impending fatherhood to the chance for professional vindication. The Pacific Northwest provides ample opportunities for field research, and almost immediately he finds a subject in Clay, a troubled young anarchist who despises Scanlon's self-serving attempts at friendship but adores Naomi. He also becomes involved with a regional secessionist group and—despite his better judgment—with its leader, a sensuous free spirit called Sequoia.Naomi, while far less enchanted with these radically different surroundings, discovers that Oregon has something to offer her as well: an extraordinary world of scents. Her acutely sensitive nose is somehow revived, though she certainly doesn't like everything she's smelling. And as the Pratts welcome their newborn son, their lives become so deeply entwined with Clay's that they must soon decide exactly where their loyalties lie, before the increasingly volatile activism that Scanlon has been dabbling in engulfs them all.A contemporary civil war between desire and betrayal, rich in crisp, luxuriant detail, The Oregon Experiment explores a minefield of convictions and complications at once political, social, and intimately personal.

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Evoking Jane Austen, Emma Straub, and other masters of the literary marriage, Breathing Lessons celebrates the small miracles and magic of truly knowing someone.Unfolding over the course of a single emotionally fraught day, this stunning novel encompasses a lifetime of dreams, regrets and reckonings—and is oftern regarded as Tyler's seminal work. Maggie and Ira Moran are on a road trip from Baltimore, Maryland to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania to attend the funeral of a friend. Along the way, they reflect on the state of their marriage, its trials and its triumphs—through their quarrels, their routines, and their ability to tolerate each other's faults with patience and affection. Where Maggie is quirky, lovable and mischievous, Ira is practical, methodical and mired in reason. What begins as a day trip becomes a revelatory and unexpected journey, as Ira and Maggie rediscover the strength of their bond and the joy of having somebody with whom to share the ride, bumps and all.“More powerful and moving than anything [Tyler] has done.” —Los Angeles Times

At the turn of the twentieth century, Arctic explorer Edward Mackley sets out to reach the North Pole and vanishes into the icy landscape without a trace. He leaves behind a young wife, Emily, who awaits his return for decades, her dreams and devotion gradually freezing into rigid widowhood. A hundred years later, on a sweltering mid–summer's day, Edward's great–grand–niece Julia moves through the old family house, attempting to impose some order on the clutter of inherited belongings and memories from that ill–fated expedition, and taking care to ignore the deepening cracks within her own marriage. But as afternoon turns into evening, Julia makes a discovery that splinters her long–held image of Edward and Emily's romance. The Still Point moves through past, present, and future, with dreams revealing a universal simultaneity to the choices we must all make in the faces of love and passion. Long–listed for the Orange Prize, The Still Point is a powerful literary debut, masterfully told in the language of the heart.