Elinor Lipman
1) Isabel's bed
Author
Description
When Harriet Mahoney first saw it, Isabel Krug's bed was covered in sheared sheep and littered with celebrity biographies. The unpublished, fortyish, and recently jilted Harriet had fled wintry Manhattan in response to a mysterious ad in the New York Review of Books: "Book in progress? Why not share my Cape Cod retreat? Roomy and peaceful-your life will be your own." In a room with a view atop a Truro dune, Harriet starts on a different path to fulfillment...
Author
Description
Everyone in King George, New Hampshire, loved Margaret Batten-part-time amateur actress, full-time wallflower-and single mother to a now distant daughter, Sunny. But accidents happen, and the death of Margaret, side by side with her putative fiance, brings Sunny back to the scene of her unhappy adolescence, to the community that remembers her solely, nervously, as the girl who golfed. Reentry is to be dreaded; there's no hiding in a town with one...
Author
Description
Elinor Lipman has populated her fictional universe with characters so utterly real that we feel like they're old friends. Now she shares an even more intimate world with us - her own - in essays that offer a candid, charming take on modern life. Looking back and forging ahead, she considers the subjects that matter most: childhood and condiments, long marriage and solo living, career and politics. Here you'll find the lighthearted: a celebration of...
Author
Description
A hysterical phone call from Henry Archer's ex-wife and a familiar face in a photograph upend his well ordered life and bring him back into contact with the child he adored, a short-term stepdaughter from a misbegotten marriage long ago. Henry is a lawyer, an old fashioned man, gay, successful, and lonely. Thalia is now 28, a hopeful actress, estranged from her newly widowed crackpot mother-Denise, Henry's ex. Hoping it will lead to better things...