Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge: indomitable, compassionate and often unpredictable. A retired schoolteacher in a small coastal town in Maine, as she grows older she struggles to make sense of the changes in her life. She is a woman who sees into the hearts of those around her, their triumphs and tragedies. We meet her stoic husband, bound to her in a marriage both broken and strong, and a young man who aches for the mother he lost - and whom Olive comforts by her mere presence, while her own son feels overwhelmed by her complex sensitivities. A penetrating, vibrant exploration of the human soul, the story of Olive Kitteridge will make you laugh, nod in recognition, wince in pain, and shed a tear or two.

With compassion, humor, and striking insight, Amy and Isabelle explores the secrets of sexuality that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter. Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student in a small mill town, falls in love with her math teacher, and together they cross the line between understandable fantasy and disturbing reality. When discovered, this emotional and physical trespass brings disgrace to Amy's mother, Isabelle, and intensifies the shame she feels about her own past. In a fury, she lashes out at her daughter's beauty and then retreats into outraged silence. Amy withdraws, too, and mother and daughter eat, sleep, and even work side by side but remain at a vast, seemingly unbridgeable distance from each other. This conflict is surrounded by other large and small dramas in the town of Shirley Falls--a teenage pregnancy, a UFO sighting, a missing child, and the trials of Fat Bev, the community's enormous (and enormously funny and compassionate) peacemaker and amateur medical consultant. Keeping Isabelle and Amy as the main focus of her sharp, sympathetic eye, Elizabeth Strout attends to them all. As she does so, she reveals not only her deep affection for her characters, both serious and comic, but her profound wisdom about the human condition in general. She makes us care about these extraordinary ordinary people and makes us hope that they will find a way out of their often self-imposed emotional exile.From the Hardcover edition.

"Strout's iconic heroine Lucy Barton recounts her complex, tender relationship with William, her first husband -- and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante."-- 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 people closest to us.

"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 and a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all--the one between mother and daughter"--

Catalyzed by a nephew's thoughtless prank, a pair of brothers confront painful psychological issues surrounding the freak accident that killed their father when they were boys, a loss linked to a heartbreaking deception that shaped their personal and professional lives.

Presents twenty of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.

The Book of Miracles (from The Dew Breaker) / Edwidge Danticat -- The Postman's Cottage (from The Hill Road) / Patrick O'Keeffe -- My Podiatrist Tells Me a Story About a Boy and a Dog (from The Stories of Mary Gordon) / Mary Gordon -- The Zero Meter Diving Team (from Like You'd Understand, Anyway) / Jim Shepard -- Bullet in the Brain (from Our Story Begins) / Tobias Wolff -- Saleema (from In Other Rooms, Other Wonders) / Daniyal Mueenuddin -- Memory Wall (from Memory Wall) / Anthony Doerr -- Snowmen (from In the Penny Arcade) / Steven Millhauser -- Ghosts, Cowboys (from Battleborn) / Claire Vaye Watkins -- Tenth of December (from Tenth of December) / George Saunders -- Something Amazing (from Thunderstruck & Other Stories) / Elizabeth McCracken -- Nirvana (from Fortune Smiles) / Adam Johnson -- How She Remembers It (from For a Little While) / Rick Bass -- The Sign (from Anything Is Possible) / Elizabeth Strout.

A contemporary of Ann Beattie and Tobias Wolff, Frederick Busch was a master craftsman of the form; his subjects were single-event moments in so-called ordinary life. The stories in this volume, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, are tales of families trying to heal their wounds, save their marriages, and rescue their children. In "Ralph the Duck," a security guard struggles to hang on to his marriage. In "Name the Name," a traveling teacher attends to students outside the school, including his own son, locked in a country jail. In Busch's work, we are reminded that we have no idea what goes on behind closed doors or in the mind of another. In the words of Raymond Carver, "With astonishing felicity of detail, Busch presents us with a world where real things are at stake--and sometimes, as in the real world, everything is risked." From his first volume, Hardwater Country (1974), to his most recent, Rescue Missions (2006), this volume selects thirty stories from an "American master" (Dan Cryer, Newsday), showcasing a body of work that is sure to shape American fiction for generations to come.

"Olive Kitteridge has returned, as indomitable as ever, this time as a person getting older, navigating her next decade as she comes to terms with the changes--sometimes welcome, sometimes not--in her own life. Here is Olive, strangely content in her second marriage, still in an evolving relationship with her son and his family, encountering a cast of memorable characters in the seaside town of Crosby, Maine. Whether it's a young girl coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth at a baby shower, or a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, the irascible Olive improbably touches the lives of others."--Provided by publisher.

The three Long sisters of Welleswood, New Jersey, felt they could handle any problem, any crisis together...But suddenly, each was facing the most critical challenge of her life. Andrea, a single mom, was in a fight for survival, against cancer. Madge, who'd once lived a storybook life, needed to find forgiveness—if she ever could—for a husband who'd kept a shocking secret for years. Jenny, pregnant with her third child, longed to keep her husband's dream alive, whatever the sacrifice.To get through it all, they would have to lean on one another as never before, trusting that their love and hope—and their faith, no matter how far it was tested—would see them through.