FICTION · GENERAL
Beth Richardson Gutcheon
Also known as: Beth Gutcheon, BETH GUTCHEON
My children think I'm mad to come up here in winter, but this is the only place I could tell this story.
— from More Than You Know, 2001
Most acclaimed
More Than You Know
2001
Once Toni Cavender was Hollywood's most popular leading actress, but being charged with murder grants her a different kind of notoriety. Even though the jury acquitted Toni of killing a producer whose movies were little more than soft pornography, there were many who believed Toni got away with murder. To escape public scrutiny, Toni retreats to her childhood home in Big Sur, where she dedicates herself to finding the runaway teenage girl who no one but her closest confidants know is her daughter. Because he proved to be quite effective in helping her elude the press after her trial, Toni hires private detective Damon Bradley to help with the search. Although Toni has cultivated a reputation as an "Ice Queen," she quickly discovers ruggedly handsome Damon is very skilled in warming her up and keeping her safe when dangerous secrets motivate a killer.
Leeway Cottage
2005
In this beautifully written tour de force of a novel, Beth Gutcheon takes readers back to the coastal village of Dundee, Maine. There, in a Victorian summer house called Leeway Cottage, we witness the scenes of a long twentieth-century marriage.In April 1940, as the Nazis march into Denmark, a rich girl of the Dundee summer colony named Sydney Brant marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. They believe they are well matched, as young lovers do, but almost at once, their views of the world and their marriage begin to diverge. Laurus's beloved family is in Copenhagen, hostage to what the fortunes of Hitler's war will bring, especially as his mother is Jewish. When Laurus chooses to leave Sydney in the fall of 1941 to help build a Danish Resistance from London, Sydney is dismayed. By the time they are reunited four years later, Laurus's family and the reader have been through one of the most stirring stories of the war: Denmark's courageous grassroots rescue of virtually all 7,000 of the country's Jews. Meanwhile, in America, Sydney has led a group knitting for the war effort, and had a baby.In the decades to come, many people, especially their three grown children, will wonder whether these two very different people understand each other at all. If they do, how do they stay together? Laurus likes to claim that in heaven you get to see the movie of your life, with all the blanks filled in. In their old age Sydney fears what he might see and why he wants to know; their children fear he'll die and there won't be any movie.But there will be.
Best Sellers
Condensed versions of “The Tower” by Richard Martin Stern, and “All Creatures Great and Small” by James Herriot The Tower The World Tower Building rose, slim, graceful, dominating the skyline of Manhattan – a miracle of construction, as disasterproof as the finest architects and engineers could make it. On the day of its dedication, as a glittering cast of VIPs gathers in its Tower Room, an architect learns that there may be electrical flaws in the structure. And then a deranged act of violence threatens catastrophe. All Creatures Great and Small James Herriot was a young veterinary surgeon when he went to the remote Yorkshire Dales to treat animals large and small. He soon discovered that calving could tax the vet as much as the cow. The profession was still relatively primitive. For some complaints, cold water and Epsom salts were the only known remedies. Now Dr. Herriot sets his experiniece down with the skill of a natural-born narrator: The Pekingese who sent out social invitations, the beloved old horses in a sun-dappled meadow, the runaway pigs, Herriot’s own courtship, which began in Yorshire mud and dancing pumps. This warm, often hilarious, thoroughly enjoyable story captures the beauty of moorland and mountain, the plain speech and thought of the Dale farmers, and the daily communion between man and beast. -- Description from inside front cover