Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesnt bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new, spare, and efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.

The timid doctor's wife Delia Grinstead walks away from her family, detaching herself from all that is familiar and embarking on a quixotic journey. Delia will capture your heart and make you yearn to stay a little longer in the poignant magic of her world.

Ex-thief Barnaby Gaitlin works for Rent-a-Back, Inc., compassionately performing household chores for shut-ins and the elderly. The 30-year-old black sheep of an "old" Baltimore family, he is a disappointment to everyone in his life, including himself. Living in a basement, and haunted by his shady adolescent past, he can't seem to do anything right - until he meets kind and sensible Sophia.

Young Ian Bedloe is anxious for life to get on with it. When he intervenes in his older brother's life, he changes everyone's future - especially his own - forever.

Friday August 15th, 1997. The night the girls arrived. Two tiny Korean babies are delivered to Baltimore to two families who have no more in common than this.

Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airport: the Donaldsons, a very American couple, and the Yazdans, Maryam's fully assimilated son and his attractive Iranian wife. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. After the instant babies from distant Asia are delivered, Bitsy Donaldson impulsively invites the Yazdans to celebrate.

Macon Leary is a travel writer who hates both travel and anything out of the ordinary. He is grounded by loneliness and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts when he meets Muriel, a deliciously peculiar dog-obedience trainer who up-ends Macon's insular world and thrusts him headlong into a remarkable engagement with life.

Anne Tyler's best-selling, award-winning novels, including Ladder of Years and The Accidental Tourist, have won the hearts of readers around the world. Critics praise Tyler's eccentric but believable characters. Devoted fans relish the small but vivid moments that fill her characters' lives.

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 Baltimore (though she lived only twenty minutes away), walked into his mother's grocery store, Michael was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervor, they are propelled into a hasty wedding. But they never should have married.

Back When We Were Grownups is about one woman's search for who she really is. Listen as a 53-year-old grandmother tries to recover her girlhood self and that dignified grownup she had once been.