A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Book • When Ohio-born Pru Steiner arrives in New York in 1976, she follows in a long tradition of young people determined to take the city by storm. But when she falls in love with and marries Spence Robin, her hotshot young Shakespeare professor, her life takes a turn she couldn’t have anticipated.Thirty years later, something is wrong with Spence. The Great Man can’t concentrate; he falls asleep reading Th...

From the author of the best-selling Le Divorce and Le Mariage, a comedy of contemporary manners, morals, (ex)marriages, and motherhood (past, present, and future)--about an American woman leaving her 20-year marriage to her French second husband, returning to her native San Francisco and to the entwining lives of her children and grandchildren. “Delightful”--Claire Messud (Harper’s Magazine); “Razor-sharp prose and astute observations … a treat”--Publ...

An “engrossing debut” (Laura Dave, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me) novel about a couple whose baby dreams of adoption push them to do the unthinkable when their baby’s birth family steps into the picture.How far would you go to save your family?As soon as Gail and John Durbin bring home their adopted baby Maya, she becomes the glue that mends their fractured marriage.But the Durbin’s social ...

Smart, sublime, and wickedly clever, The Smash-Up captures—then transcends—our current polarized moment“An exhilarating ride . . . hilarious . . . a modern and energetic story about a marriage on the skids.”—The New York TimesEthan has always been one of the good guys, and for years, nobody has appreciated this fact more than his wife, Zo. Until now. Jolted into activism by the 2016 election, Zo’s transfor...

From the author of INTO THE BLUE, a transporting love story of music, stardom, heartbreak, and a gifted young singer-songwriter who must find her own voice: “In the vein of Daisy Jones and the Six and The Final Revival of Opal and Nev, [this] is an intoxicating chronicle of the music industry, inspired largely by the love affair between artists Joni Mitchell and James Taylor” (Elle).The year is 1969, and the Bayleen Island Folk Fest is ab...

Named one of the best books of 2021 by NPR, The Washington Post, and Financial Times“No one states problems more correctly, more astutely, more amusingly and more uncomfortably than Francine Prose . . . The gift of her work to a reader is to create for us what she creates for her protagonist: the subtle unfolding, the moment-by-moment process of discovery as we read and change, from not knowing and even not wanting to know or care...

“A beautifully observed and thrillingly honest novel about the dark corners of family life and the long, complicated search for understanding and grace.” —Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather“The Fourth Child is keen and beautiful and heartbreaking—an exploration of private guilt and unexpected obligation, of the intimate losses of power embedded in female adolescence, and of the fraught moments of glancing div...