Anita Shreve

"In October, 1947, after a summer-long drought, fires began near Bar Harbor and raced along the coast of Maine, ravaging two hundred thousand acres--the largest fire in Maine's history. In the southern part of the state, people were forced into the sea to escape the flames. Five months pregnant, Grace Holland is left alone to protect her two toddlers when her husband Gene joins the volunteers fighting to bring the fire under control. Along with her best friend, Rosie, and Rosie's two young children, the women watch in horror as their houses go up in flames, then walk into the ocean as a last resort. They spend the night frantically trying to save their children. When dawn comes, they have miraculously survived, but their lives are forever changed: homeless, penniless, and left to face an uncertain future in a town that no longer exists. As Grace awaits news of her husband's fate, she is thrust into a new world in which she must make a life on her own, beginning with absolutely nothing--she must find work, a home, a way to provide for her children. In the midst of devastating loss, Grace discovers glorious new freedoms--joys and triumphs she could never have expected her narrow life with Gene could contain--and her spirit soars. And then the unthinkable happens, and Grace's bravery is tested as never before"--

The stars are fire

a novel

A change in altitude

Edith Wharton

Susanna Moore

Ethan Frome

A Novel

Body Surfing

Testimony

Olympia.

Eden Close

Strange Fits of Passion; Where or When

During World War II, an injured American pilot is cared for in a safe house by a Belgian farm wife who is part of the local resistance, and together they discover passion, self-discovery, and sacrifice

Resistance

Wenn die Nacht in Flammen steht

Rescue

"An 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. "--

Stella Bain

A Change in Altitude

Gathering to attend a wedding in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, seven former classmates find the reunion marked by the death of a spouse, a traumatic past event, a shocking secret, and health issues. By the author of Light on Snow. 450,000 first printing.

A Wedding in December

This magnificent novel transports readers 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. The Fortune Rock's 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 depicts a spirited young woman at the turn of the 20th century who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man. In Sea Glass, a young couple's new marriage is rocked to the core by the 1929 stock market crash. The Pilot's Wife brings us to the present day, where Kathryn is unprepared her for the late-night knock that lets her know her husband has been killed in a plane crash. Sydney, the heroine of Body Surfing has already been once divorced and once widowed by the age of 29, and finds the fragile existence she has rebuilt for herself threatened when two brothers vie for her affections. "There's something addictive about Shreve's tales," according to USA Today, and this quality is on full display in the critically acclaimed novels of The Fortune Rock's Quartet. No one writes more compellingly than Anita Shreve about marriage, family, the depths of our strength and resolve, and the supreme courage that it takes to love.

Fortune's Rocks

Anita Shreve

Books

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