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Eden Close
by Anita ShreveAndrew, an advertising executive in his mid-30s, returns to his hometown in upstate New York for his mother's funeral. He does not intend to stay in the slow rural backwater he left seventeen years before. But the dreams and memories persist and in the darkened farmhouse he relives that hot, bloody night when Eden Close was blinded - by the same gun that killed her father.The enigmatic Eden had been Andrew's childhood companion. Together the two roamed summer cornfields, smoked their first forbidden cigarettes, skated, fished and fought until the tomboy turned temptress - then their friendship ended. Now, despite warnings, Andrew is drawn again to this lost, blind girl of his youth, drawn to save her from the cruel neglect she has endured for seventeen sightless years without him. But first he must discover the grisly truth about that night...
Eden Close: Eden Close; Strange Fits Of Passion; Where Or When
by Anita ShreveChildhood friends reunite years after a shattering tragedy in this “compelling page-turner” by the New York Times–bestselling author (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).When Andrew was about to leave his small upstate New York town for college, tragedy struck the beautiful girl next door, Eden Close. An adopted child, Eden had learned to avoid the mother who did not want her and to please the father who did. She also aimed to please Andrew and his friends, first by being one of the boys and later by seducing them. Then one hot night, Andrew was awakened by gunshots and piercing screams from the next farm: Mr. Close had been killed and Eden blinded.Now, seventeen years later, Andrew returns to his upstate New York hometown to attend his mother’s funeral, and begins to uncover the grisly story––to unravel the layers of thwarted love between the husband, wife, and tormented girl. And as the truth about Eden’s past comes to light, so too does Andrew’s strange and binding attachment to her . . . “Eden’s story has the heightened emotions, the dark, brooding atmosphere of a Southern gothic novel . . . Shreve demonstrates her ability to create highly vivid, sympathetic people.” —The New York Times“Beautifully rendered scenes.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Shreve simply has the Gift—the ability to hook you from the first page and not let go until the final word.” —The Washington Post Book World
Fortune's Rocks
by Anita ShreveFortune's Rocks transports the reader to the turn of the twentieth century, to the world of a prominent Boston family summering on the New Hampshire coast...'No praise is too high for Fortune's Rocks. The book will take hold of you and not let you go until the last word' USA Today'Exceptionally fine . . . Shreve writes with power and passion' Daily ExpressFourteen-year-old Olympic Biddeford is spending the summer with her parents at their seasonal house at Fortune's Rocks. Her father handles her education himself and is in fact a publisher of mildly liberal literature. One author he admires, who also practises as a physician, comes to visit the house. Forty years old, married with four children, he embarks on an affair with Olympia. They have a swift, passionate summer, torn apart when they are discovered together during Olympic's fifteenth birthday party. Her parents are mortified and immediately take Olympia back to Boston. When a baby boy is born nine months later, he is taken from her and she finds herself in exile at a ladies college and then as a governess. She decides she must get her child back, which means returning to Fortune's Rocks...
Fortune's Rocks Quartet: Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, Body Surfing (The\fortune's Rocks Quartet Ser. #Bk. 1)
by Anita ShreveTHE FORTUNE'S ROCKS QUARTET collects four of Anita Shreve's most beloved novels--Fortune's Rocks, The Pilot's Wife, Sea Glass, and Body Surfing--for the first time. The novels highlight Shreve's ability to illuminate women's lives across different eras and share a delightful detail: they are all set in the same coastal New England home, one that has inspired Shreve for over a decade. Any house with age to it can tell a million stories about the families who have lived there, and Shreve has been quoted as saying, ''You could base an entire life's work on the people who come in and out of a house.''
Fortune's Rocks: A Novel (The\fortune's Rocks Quartet Ser. #Bk. 3)
by Anita ShreveEverywhere hailed for its emotional intensity and unflagging narrative momentum, this magnificent novel transports us to the turn of the twentieth century, to the world of a prominent Boston family summering on the New Hampshire coast, and to the social orbit of a spirited young woman who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man, with cataclysmic results.
Hay fuego en los astros: Una novela
by Anita ShreveEn octubre de 1947, Grace Holland atraviesa dos sequías simultáneas. Un verano extremadamente caluroso y seco ha convertido el estado de Maine en un polvorín. Grace y su esposo Gene han perdido el amor y ya casi no se hablan. Con cinco meses de embarazo y cuidando a dos niños pequeños, la vida de Grace se resume nada más a la soledad y sus labores domésticas. Una noche se despierta y descubre que los incendios arrasan la costa y se acercan cada vez más a su casa. Se ve obligada a arrojar sus hijos al mar para escapar de las llamas, mientras observa impotente cómo todo lo que conoce arde hasta los cimientos. Por la mañana, su vida cambiará para siempre: está sin hogar, sin dinero, esperando noticias sobre la suerte de su marido, y se encuentra abandonada frente a un futuro incierto en una ciudad que ya no existe. Con valentía y estoicismo, Grace supera una pérdida devastadora y, a pesar del humo, avista la oportunidad de reescribir su historia. X
Light On Snow
by Anita ShreveI watched my father run forward in his snowshoes the way one sometimes does in dreams, unable to make the legs move fast enough. I ran to the place where he knelt. I looked down into the sleeping bag. A tiny face gazed up at me, the eyes wide despite their many folds. The baby was wrapped in a bloody towel, and its lips were blue.' The events of a December afternoon on which a father and his daughter find an abandoned infant in the snow will forever alter eleven-year-old Nicky Dillon's understanding of the world which she is about to enter and the adults who inhabit it: a father who has taken great pains to remove himself from society in order to put behind him an unthinkable tragedy; a young woman who must live with the consequences of the terrible choices she has made; and a detective whose cleverness is superseded only by his sense of justice. Written from the point of view of thirty-year-old Nicky as she recalls the vivid images of that fateful December, hers is a tale of love and courage, of tragedy and redemption, and of the ways in which the human heart always seeks to heal itself.
Light on Snow
by Anita ShreveWritten from the point of view of 30-year-old Nicky as she recalls the vivid December day, 19 years earlier, when she and her father found an abandoned infant in the snow, this is a beautiful contemporary novel about love and memory from the author of the bestselling "All He Ever Wanted" and "The Pilot's Wife."
Rescue
by Anita ShreveIs love always worth saving - no matter what the cost?The car crash should have killed her. But rookie paramedic Peter Webster takes the emergency call, and helps the young woman, Sheila Arsenault, to survive. After the accident, she haunts his thoughts, despite his misgivings about getting involved with a patient. Soon he is embroiled in an intense love affair and in Sheila's troubled life. Eighteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering dangerously off course and for the first time in their quiet life together Peter fears for her future. He seeks out the only person who may be able to help Rowan, although Sheila's return is sure to unleash all the questions Peter has been carefully keeping at bay: Why would a mother leave her family? How did the marriage of two people in love unravel?
Rescue: A Novel
by Anita ShreveA rookie paramedic pulls a young woman alive from her totaled car, a first rescue that begins a lifelong tangle of love and wreckage. Sheila Arsenault is a gorgeous enigma--streetwise and tough-talking, with haunted eyes, fierce desires, and a never-look-back determination. Peter Webster, as straight an arrow as they come, falls for her instantly and entirely. Soon Sheila and Peter are embroiled in an intense love affair, married, and parents to a baby daughter. Like the crash that brought them together, it all happened so fast. Can you ever really save another person? Eighteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering dangerously off track, and for the first time in their ordered existence together, Webster fears for her future. His work shows him daily every danger the world contains, how wrong everything can go in a second. All the love a father can give a daughter is suddenly not enough. Sheila's sudden return may be a godsend--or it may be exactly the wrong moment for a lifetime of questions and anger and longing to surface anew. What tore a young family apart? Is there even worse damage ahead? The questions lifted up in Anita Shreve's utterly enthralling new novel are deep and lasting, and this is a novel that could only have been written by a master of the human heart.
Resistance
by Anita ShreveAs the wife of a Resistance member in German-occupied Belgium, Claire Daussois has grown used to hiding strange men in her attic. By the end of 1943, the tiny room has housed dozens of Allied airmen, soldiers and other refugees, whom Claire nurses and harbours from the perpetual threat of discovery by the Gestapo.The B-17 bomber that crash-lands outside Claire's village of Delahaut contains the man who will be both the last and the most significant of the attic's residents: US Air Force pilot Ted Brice. Ted is found severely wounded and semi-conscious by ten-year-old Jean Benoit minutes before the Germans begin their search for survivors. Knowing of Claire's connections with the Resistance, and desperate to atone for his father's shameful collaboration, Jean realises that Claire is the pilot's only hope of survival.The month that follows will stay with them both for the rest of their lives. A few weeks only, a handful of days, it is a period in which the war recedes in the face of more powerful forces - before imposing itself once more with shocking suddenness.
Resistance: A Novel
by Anita ShreveThis tale of impossible love--told with the same narrative grace and keen eye for human emotion that have distinguished all of Anita Shreve's cherished bestsellers--leads us into a harrowing world where forbidden passions have catastrophic consequences. In a Nazi-occupied Belgian village, Claire Daussois, the wife of a resistance worker, shelters a wounded American bomber pilot in a secret attic hideaway. As she nurses him back to health, Claire is drawn into an affair that seems strong enough to conquer all--until the brutal realities of war intrude, shattering every idea she ever had about love, trust, and betrayal.
Sea Glass
by Anita ShreveThe year is 1929 and Honora Beecher and her husband, Sexton, are just settling into a new marriage and a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. While Honora fixes up the derelict house and searches for bits of sea glass on the beach, Sexton risks everything they own to buy the house they both love. Along with millions of other Americans, he is blindsided by the stock market crash and finds himself penniless. The only work he can find is at a nearby mill, where a labour conflict is erupting into violence. Shaken by forces they scarcely understand, Honora and Sexton try to build a marriage and home while overwhelmed by passions of every kind.Writing with the power and immediacy that have made her novels bestsellers, Shreve unfolds interlocking lives, each with its own share of love, loss and challenge. This is another gripping and unforgettable story of the human heart from one of the most accomplished novelists of our time.
Sea Glass: A Novel (The\fortune's Rocks Quartet Ser. #Bk. 2)
by Anita ShreveFrom its opening pages, Anita Shreve's Sea Glass surrounds the reader in the surprisingly rich feeling of the New Hampshire coast in winter. Vividly evoking the life of the coastal community at the beginning of the Great Depression, Sea Glass shifts through the multiple points of view of six principal characters; it's a skillfully created story of braided lives that bounces easily (even inevitably) from character to character. We learn how these lives come together following the stock market crash of 1929 and about the struggles of mill workers on the starkly beautiful New Hampshire coast during the following year. At the novel's center is the story of Honora Beecher, a young newlywed who compulsively collects sea glass along the beach as she collects unexpected friendship in her new beachside community, and Francis, a boy who discovers a father figure in the towering character of McDermott, an Irish mill worker, at a time when he most needs direction. Each character finds unexpected new purpose beyond the struggle to survive during that turbulent year among the dunes. First their lives barely touch, then they intersect, and finally they become inextricably bound. By the powerful and unexpected final scenes of the story, every point of view, every brilliant shard of life depends deeply on all the others. It is a very satisfying read--confidently told and deeply felt--with as many subtle colors and reflections as the sea glass that permeates the narrative. --Paul Ford
Stella Bain
by Anita ShreveAn epic story, set against the backdrop of World War I, from bestselling author Anita Shreve.When an American woman, Stella Bain, is found suffering from severe shell shock in an exclusive garden in London, surgeon August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in.A gesture of goodwill turns into something more as Bridge quickly develops a clinical interest in his houseguest. Stella had been working as a nurse's aide near the front, but she can't remember anything prior to four months earlier when she was found wounded on a French battlefield.In a narrative that takes us from London to America and back again, Shreve has created an engrossing and wrenching tale about love and the meaning of memory, set against the haunting backdrop of a war that destroyed an entire generation.
Strange Fits Of Passion
by Anita ShreveA young and successful journalist working in New York, Maureen English appears to have the perfect life and family. But Maureen's husband, a highly respected fellow reporter, has in private a tendency towards alcohol and violent abuse. When the situation at home becomes intolerable, Maureen takes her baby daughter and flees. In a Maine fishing town she assumes a new identity and spends six weeks battling sub-zero temperatures, the intrusive glare of the townsfolk - and her fears of discovery.Against the force of the wintry sea- the cawing of the gulls, the lobstermen hauling their catch, the press of waves against the rocks - Maureen settles into the rhythms of a new life. Two married men pursue her, and one captures her heart. But this calming respite ends suddenly, leaving in its wake a murder, a rape charge, a suicide and a helpless child.Nearly nineteen years later, a cache of documents regarding Maureen English - abused, accused and imprisoned - are given to her daughter by the journalist who made her name reporting the case. The truth should lie within them, but the papers raise far more questions than they answer...
Strange Fits of Passion: A Novel (Harvest Book Ser.)
by Anita Shreve“Thrilling and finely written” with an ingenious structure, a powerful portrait of truth, deception, and a troubled marriage from the bestselling author (The New Yorker).Everyone believes that Maureen and Harrold English, two successful New York City journalists, have a happy, stable marriage. It’s the early ’70s, and no one discusses or even suspects domestic abuse.But after Maureen suffers another brutal beating, she flees with her infant daughter to a coastal town in Maine. The weeks pass slowly, and just as Maureen settles into her new life and new identity, Harrold reappears, bringing the story to a violent, unforgettable climax.Nearly nineteen years later, a cache of documents regarding Maureen English is given to her daughter by a journalist. The truth should lie within them, but the papers raise far more questions than they answer . . . “Superbly rendered . . . both touching and troubling. The box-within-a-box structure moves Shreve’s subtle and searing book beyond the contemporary horror genre. It creates a kind of double novel.” —Cosmopolitan“The novel has a thought-provoking twist at the end, and Shreve leaves us with [a] haunting [question]: ‘Who could ever know where a story had begun?’” —The Washington Post Book World“Her elegiac, portentous prose provides effective pacing . . . insightful and moving.” —Publishers Weekly“A superbly crafted, intelligently written exploration of the complicities of an abusive relationship . . . Highly recommended.” —Booklist (starred review)
Testimony
by Anita ShreveAt a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voice -- those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal -- that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment.A gripping emotional drama with the pace of a thriller, Anita Shreve's Testimony explores the dark impulses that sway the lives of seeming innocents, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions.
Testimony: A Novel
by Anita ShreveAt a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora's box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices--those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal--that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment. Writing with a pace and intensity surpassing even her own greatest work, Anita Shreve delivers in TESTIMONY a gripping emotional drama with the impact of a thriller. No one more compellingly explores the dark impulses that sway the lives of seeming innocents, the needs and fears that drive ordinary men and women into intolerable dilemmas, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions.
The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories
by Sarah Orne Jewett Anita Shreve Peter BalaamA writer comes one summer to Dunnet Landing, a Maine seacoast town, where she follows the lonely inhabitants of once-prosperous coastal towns. Here, lives are molded by the long Maine winters, rock-filled fields and strong resourceful women.
The Last Time They Met
by Anita ShreveWhen Linda Fallon and Thomas Janes meet at a writers' festival in Toronto, it is the first time they have seen each other for twenty-six years. Theirs is a story bound by the irresistible pull of true passion -- a love which begins in Massachusetts in the early 1960s, is rekindled in Kenya in the mid 1970s and which is about to play out its astonishing final episode . . . Written with reverse chronology, Anita Shreve's new novel is a haunting story of mesmerising beauty, with a strong narrative pull that inescapably draws the reader in, and leaves its most stunning revelation until the very last pages. Brilliantly ambitious and powerfully written, THE LAST TIME THEY MET is a tale not so much of life, but of a life not lived.
The Last Time They Met: A Novel
by Anita ShreveA novel of love, forgiveness, and paths not followed. The novel travels back through the lives of Linda and Thomas, showing the reader how a single choice can alter lives forever.
The Lives of Stella Bain
by Anita Shreve'Atonement with just the tiniest dash of Downton Abbey' Red magazine'Gripping and moving' Sunday TimesHauled in a cart to a field hospital in northern France in March 1916, an American woman wakes from unconsciousness to the smell of gas gangrene, the sounds of men in pain, and an almost complete loss of memory: she knows only that she can drive an ambulance, she can draw, and her name is Stella Bain. A stateless woman in a lawless country, Stella embarks on a journey to reconstruct her life. Suffering an agonising and inexplicable array of symptoms, she finds her way to London. There, Dr August Bridge, a cranial surgeon turned psychologist, is drawn to tracking her amnesia to its source. What brutality was she fleeing when she left the tranquil seclusion of a New England college campus to serve on the Front; for what crime did she need to atone - and whom did she leave behind? Vivid, intense and gripping, packed with secrets and revelations, The Lives of Stella Bain is at once a ravishing love story and an intense psychological mystery.
The Pilot's Wife
by Anita ShreveAn Oprah's Book Club selection, this gripping and powerfully wrought novel from the bestselling author of The Weight of Water is a stunning meditation on grief, betrayal and 'the ultimate unknowability of those closest to us' (Daily Telegraph) Who can guess what a woman will do when the unthinkable becomes her reality? Being married to a pilot has taught Kathryn Lyons to be ready for emergencies, but nothing has prepared her for the late-night knock on her door and the news of her husband's fatal crash. As Kathryn struggles through her grief, she is forced to confront disturbing rumours about the man she loved and the life that she took for granted. Torn between her impulse to protect her husband's memory and her desire to know the truth, Kathryn sets off to find out if she ever really knew the man who was her husband. In her determination to test the truth of her marriage, she faces shocking revelations about the secrets a man can keep and the actions a woman is willing to take.'Enthralling' -Anita Brookner, author of the Booker Prize-winning Hotel du Lac 'Compellingly told, brilliantly observed, lyrically written and when you get to the last page you simply want to run out and buy everything she's ever written' -Sunday Independent
The Pilot's Wife: A Novel (The\fortune's Rocks Quartet Ser. #Bk. 3)
by Anita ShreveOprah's latest Book Club pick is The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve--an engrossing thriller woven between the pages of a stirring meditation on love and betrayal. With one late-night knock on her door, Kathryn Lyons's worst fears as a pilot's wife come true: Her husband, Jack, has died in a mid-air explosion off the coast of Ireland. Later, a phone number found among Jack's papers leads Kathryn to London and the unfathomable truth about her husband's secret other life. A second wife and two young children are just the beginning of what Jack was hiding in England. With each staggering revelation, Kathryn must reconcile her memories of the man she loved with the disturbing portrait unfolding before her.