Breathing Lessons covers the events of a day in the life of Maggie Moran, nearing fifty, married to Ira and with two children. Her eternal optimism and her inexhaustible passion for sorting out other people's lives and willing them to fall in love is severely tested one hot summer day. Maggie and Ir[...]

After losing her husband in a motor accident, at 53 Rebecca asks herself whether she is an imposter in her own life. Is she really the joyous and outgoing celebrator that her family think she is? What would have happened if she'd married her college sweetheart? And should she try to find him again?[...]

By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amateur Marriage. Having sacked her handyman, newly-widowed Mrs Emerson finds a replacement in Elizabeth, a lanky, awkward girl. The Emersons - there are seven grown-up children - have a reputation for craziness and Elizabeth finds herself drawn into their[...]

How does a man addicted to routine - a man who flosses his teeth before love-making - cope with the chaos of everyday life? With the loss of his son, the departure of his wife and the arrival of Muriel, a dog trainer from the Meow-Bow dog clinic, Macon's attempts at ordinary life are tragically and [...]

Friday August 15th, 1997. Two tiny Korean babies are delivered to Baltimore to two families who have no more in common than this. Every year, on the anniversary of 'Arrival Day' their two extended families celebrate together, with more and more elaborately competitive parties, as little Susan and Ji[...]

Ben Joe is the only boy in a family of six sisters, Mama and Gram. He is studying for a law degree in New York when he hears his eldest sister Joanne has left her husband and returned home with her baby girl. Out of a mixture of homesickness and duty Ben Joe returns to the home in which he has alway[...]

When Dorothy came back from the dead, it seemed to Aaron that some people simply didn't notice. The accident that killed Dorothy - involving an oak tree, a sun porch and some elusive biscuits - leaves Aaron bereft and the house a wreck. As those around him fuss and flap and bring him casserole after[...]

When Dorothy came back from the dead, Aaron noticed that some people simply ignored the fact; some seemed to have forgotten she'd died in the first place; and others just walked straight on by. The accident that killed Dorothy - involving an oak tree, a sun porch and some elusive biscuits - leaves A[...]

When eighteen-year-old Ian Bedloe pricks the bubble of his family's optimistic self-deception, his brother Danny drives into a wall, his sister-in-law falls apart, and his parents age before his eyes. Consumed by guilt Ian finds the hope of forgiveness at the Church of the Second Chance, and leaves [...]

This is a brand new series of five of Woolf's major works, in beautifully designed hardback editions. Tracing the lives of a group of friends, this novel follows their development from childhood to middle age. Social events, individual achievements and disappointments form the outer structure of the[...]

Anne Tyler gives us a wise, haunting, and deeply moving new novel in which she explores how a middle-aged man, ripped apart by the death of his wife, is gradually restored by her frequent appearances--in their house, on the roadway, in the market.
Crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron spent [...]

From the inimitable Anne Tyler, a rich and compelling novel about a mismatched marriage--and its consequences, spanning three generations.
They seemed like the perfect couple--young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment Pauline, a stranger to the Polish Eastern Avenue neighborhood of Ba[...]

Maggie and Ira Moran have been married for twenty-eight years-and it shows: in their quarrels, in their routines, in their ability to tolerate with affection each other's eccentricities. Maggie, a kooky, lovable meddler and an irrepressible optimist, wants nothing more than to fix her son's broken m[...]