"Shows how a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all--the one between mother and daughter. Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy's childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every...

"Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. 'William,' she confesses, 'has always been a mystery to me.' Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are. So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret - one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the...

In the small town of West Annett, Maine in the 1950's, the minister Tyler Caskey is still grieving two years after the death of his wife. One daughter, Jeannie is sent upstate to live with his overbearing mother. The other Katherine has become antisocial. Tyler turns to his housekeeper Connie Hatch when her teacher suggests Katherine speak to the school counselor. This starts gossip about Katherine's stability and Tyler's possible affair with the...

"Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others. Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The debut novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant mother, and a parent's rage at the discovery of her daughter's secrets.
“One of those rare, invigorating books that take an apparently familiar world and peer into it with ruthless intimacy, revealing a strange and startling place.”—The New York Times Book Review

Before...

“As our vision becomes more global, our storytelling is stretching in many ways. Stories increasingly change point of view, switch location, and sometimes pack as much material as a short novel might,” writes guest editor Elizabeth Strout. “It’s the variety of voices that most indicates the increasing confluence of cultures involved in making us who we are.” The Best American Short Stories 2013 presents an impressive...

"The uncannily relevant, deliciously clear-eyed collected stories of a critically acclaimed, award-winning "American literary treasure" (Boston Globe), ripe for rediscovery--with a foreword by Elizabeth Strout. From her many well-loved novels, Hilma Wolitzer--now 90 years old and at the top of her game--has gained a reputation as one of our best fiction writers, who "raises ordinary people and everyday occurrences to a new height." (Washington Post)...

The four-part drama that tells the story of a seemingly placid New England town that is actually wrought with illicit affairs, crime and tragedy, all told through the lens of Olive, whose wicked wit and harsh demeanor mask a warm but troubled heart and staunch moral center. The story spans 25 years and focuses on Olive's relationships with her husband, Henry, the good-hearted and kindly town pharmacist; their son, Christopher, who resents his mother's...

«Pisatelʹnit͡sa Li͡usi Barton davno v razvode so svoim pervym muzhem Vilʹi͡amom, s kotorym prozhila v brake mnogo let i vyrastila dvukh dochereĭ. No kogda u Li͡usi umiraet vtoroĭ muzh, a Vilʹi͡ama brosaet zhena, oni ishchut podderzhki drug u druga i vmeste otpravli͡ai͡utsi͡a v Mėn na poiski sestry Vilʹi͡ama, o sushchestvovanii kotoroĭ on do nedavnikh por ne podozreval. Sobytii͡a nastoi͡ashchego perepletai͡utsi͡a v rasskaze Li͡usi...