Showing results by author "Anne Tyler" in All Categories

Thirty-eight-year-old Jeremy Pauling has never left home. He lives on the top floor of a Baltimore row house where he creates collages of little people snipped from wrapping paper. His elderly mother putters in the rooms below, until her death. And it is then that Jeremy is forced to take in Mary Tell and her child as boarders. Mary is unaware of how much courage it takes Jeremy to look her in the eye. For Jeremy, like one of his paper creations, is fragile and easily torn - especially when he's falling in love.

In the small town of Larksville, the Pike family is hopelessly out of step with the daily rhythms of life. Mrs. Pike seldom speaks, while Mr. Pike maintains a forced stoicism. Only their 10-year-old, Simon, seems able to acknowledge that their world has changed. He just doesn't understand why. The Pikes may choose to stand still, to hide from an unnamable past, but the strange shroud over their home cannot be contained.

Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day, his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late 30s a "girlfriend") tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever.

Mrs. Emerson, widowed with seven adult children, lives alone in crumbling Victorian mansion outside Baltimore with only a collection of antique clocks to keep her company. Elizabeth Abbott - 23 years old, aimless, bohemian, and beautiful - leads a vagabond lifestyle until she happens upon Mrs. Emerson's home and convinces the older woman to hire her as a handyman. When three of the strange, idiosyncratic Emerson children return to their childhood home for a visit, they are irresistibly drawn to Elizabeth.

"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon..." This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture.

Charlotte Emory has always lived a quiet, conventional life in Clarion, Maryland. She lives as simply as possible and one day decides to simplify everything and leave her husband. Her last trip to the bank throws Charlotte's life into an entirely different direction when a restless young man in a nylon jacket takes her hostage during the robbery - and soon the two are heading south into an unknown future and a most unexpected fate.

Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life. In 1967, she is a schoolgirl coping with her mother's sudden disappearance. In 1977, she is a college coed considering a marriage proposal. In 1997, she is a young widow trying to piece her life back together. And in 2017, she yearns to be a grandmother but isn't sure she ever will be. Then, one day, Willa receives a startling phone call from a stranger. Without fully understanding why, she flies across the country to Baltimore....

Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister, Bunny? Plus, she's always in trouble at work - her preschool charges adore her, but their parents don't always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner.

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.

Tough Justice: Countdown, Books 1-4 has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

Breathing Lessons covers the events of a day in the life of Maggie Moran, nearing fifty, married to Ira and with two children. Her eternal optimism and her inexhaustible passion for sorting out other people's lives and willing them to fall in love is severely tested one hot summer day. Maggie and Ira drive from Baltimore to Deer Lick to attend the funeral of the husband of Serena, Maggie's childhood friend.

How does a man addicted to routine - a man who flosses his teeth before love-making - cope with the chaos of everyday life? With the loss of his son, the departure of his wife and the arrival of Muriel, a dog trainer from the Meow-Bow dog clinic, Macon's attempts at ordinary life are tragically and comically undone. A heartfelt novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amateur Marriage and Breathing Lessons, now available as an audiobook.

Trust has never been easy for Special Agent Lara Grant. Life taught her a hard lesson as a child, one she's never forgotten. But now, when the betrayal is so close to home, Lara is pushed to the very limit. As the players finally move into position, it's time to go all in or go home. It doesn't matter that fear is shaking her very core; it doesn't matter that everything she has - her team, her new family - is on the line.

When the kids are grown and Mercy Garrett gradually moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice. Over at her studio, she wants space and silence. She won't allow any family clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond. Yet it is a clutter of untidy moments that forms the Garretts' family life over the decades, from giving a child a ride to a painstaking Easter lunch, a fateful train journey to an unexpected homecoming. And it all begins in 1959, with a family holiday to a cabin by a lake.

Tough Justice: Countdown Books 5-8 has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

Through every family run memories that bind it together - despite everything. The Tulls of Baltimore are no exception. Abandoned by her salesman husband, Pearl is left to bring up her three children alone - Cody, a flawed devil; Ezra, a flawed saint; and Jenny, errant and passionate. Now as Pearl lies dying, stiffly encased in her pride and solitude, the past is unlocked and with it, secrets. A classic novel from one of America's greatest living novelists, now available as an audiobook.

Following a deadly anthrax attack, TCD’s biological weapons expert Carly Welsh springs into action. Problem is, the Amish trust no one - especially not an FBI special agent. That’s where Noah Miller comes in. Even though the rancher left the fold decades ago, the community trusts him...and so does Dr. Welsh. But even their combined courage and smarts might not be enough against sinister forces that want them both to perish.

Micah Mortimer isn’t the most polished person you’ll ever meet. His numerous sisters and in-laws regard him oddly but very fondly, but he has his ways and means of navigating the world. He measures out his days running errands for work – his TECH HERMIT sign cheerily displayed on the roof of his car - maintaining an impeccable cleaning regime and going for runs (7:15 every morning). He is content with the steady balance of his life. But then the order of things starts to tilt.

Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life: when she was 11 and her mother disappeared, being proposed to at 21, the accident that would make her a widow at 41. At each of these moments, Willa ended up on a path laid out for her by others. So when she receives a phone call telling her that her son’s ex-girlfriend has been shot and needs her help, she drops everything and flies across the country. The spur-of-the moment decision to look after this woman - and her nine-year-old daughter, and her dog - will lead Willa into uncharted territory....

"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon…" This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that day in July 1959. The whole family on the porch, relaxed, half listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before. Yet this gathering is different. Abby and Red are getting older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them and their beloved family home.