The Widower's Tale
10 best books like The Widower's Tale (Julia Glass): The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise, The Cookbook Collector, Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English, Northwest Corner, Elegies for the Brokenhearted, Outside the Ordinary World, The Gap Year, Stiltsville, Swim Back to Me, Faith
| Author | Julia Stuart |
| ISBN | 0385533284 |
Brimming with charm and whimsy, this exquisite novel set in the Tower of London has the transportive qualities and delightful magic of the contemporary classics Chocolat and Amélie.
Balthazar Jones has lived in the Tower of London with his loving wife, Hebe, and his 120-year-old pet tortoise...
| Author | Allegra Goodman |
| ISBN | 0385340850 |
Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare...
| Author | Natasha Solomons |
| ISBN | 0316077585 |
At the outset of World War II, Jack Rosenblum, his wife Sadie, and their baby daughter escape Berlin, bound for London. They are greeted with a pamphlet instructing immigrants how to act like "the English." Jack acquires Saville Row suits and a Jaguar. He buys his marmalade from Fortnum & Mason and...
| Author | John Burnham Schwartz |
| ISBN | 1400068452 |
The New York Times Book Review called Reservation Road “a triumph,” and the novel was universally acclaimed. Now, in a brilliant literary performance by one of our most compelling and compassionate writers, John Burnham Schwartz reintroduces us to Reservation Road’s unforgettable characters...
A savvy, spirited, moving, and surprisingly humorous novel in elegies.
Who are the people you’ll never forget? For Mary Murphy, there are five: A skirt-chasing, car-racing uncle with whiskey breath and a three-day beard. A “walking joke, a sitting duck, a fish in a barrel” named Elwood...
| Author | Dori Ostermiller |
| ISBN | 0778328899 |
Sylvia Sandon is at a crossroads in her life. A wife and mother of two daughters, she and her city-planner husband grapple with the escalating renovation of their antique farmhouse--a situation that mirrors the disarray in Sylvia's life. Facing a failing marriage and a famished career as an art teacher,...
| Author | Sarah Bird |
| ISBN | 0307592790 |
From the widely praised author of The Yokota Officers Club and The Flamenco Academy, a novel as hilarious as it is heartbreaking about a single mom and her seventeen-year-old daughter learning how to let go in that precarious moment before college empties the nest.
In The Gap Year, told with...
| Author | Susanna Daniel |
| ISBN | 0062005480 |
When Frances accepts an invitation to visit Stiltsville, a community of houses built on pilings in Biscayne Bay, she has no idea that her simple "yes" to a new friend will determine the course of her life for the next two dozen years. Set in Miami from the late '60s to the 1990s, Stiltsville is a sweeping...
| Author | Ann Packer |
| ISBN | 0307877922 |
From Ann Packer, author of the New York Times best-selling novels The Dive from Clausen’s Pier and Songs Without Words, a collection of burnished, emotionally searing stories, framed by two unforgettable linked narratives that express the transformation of a single family over the course of a...
| Author | Jennifer Haigh |
| ISBN | 0060755806 |
When Sheila McGann sets out to redeem her disgraced brother, a once-beloved Catholic priest in suburban Boston, her quest will force her to confront cataclysmic truths about her fractured Irish-American family, her beliefs, and, ultimately, herself. Award-winning author Jennifer Haigh follows...
| Author | Ivan Doig |
| ISBN | 0151012431 |
"Sure, you could believe for all you were worth that you were too young and fit and lucky to be chased down by death, but all of accumulated history yawns back, 'Why not you?'" — from "The Eleventh Man"
Ivan Doig's previous novel, the terrific "The Whistling Season" (2006) casts a long shadow,...
| Author | Carolyn Parkhurst |
| ISBN | 0385527691 |
From the bestselling author of The Dogs of Babel comes a dazzling literary mystery about the lengths to which some people will go to rewrite their past.
Bestselling novelist Octavia Frost has just completed her latest book, a revolutionary novel in which she has rewritten the last chapters...
| Author | Kate Racculia |
| ISBN | 0805092307 |
A sudden death, a never-mailed postcard, and a long-buried secret set the stage for a luminous and heart-breakingly real novel about lost souls finding one another.
The Darby-Jones boardinghouse in Ruby Falls, New York, is home to Mona Jones and her daughter, Oneida, two loners and self-declared...
| Author | Ayelet Waldman |
| ISBN | 0385517866 |
A rich and rewarding story of love, loss, and the power of family from the bestselling author of Bad Mother and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.
In the aftermath of a devastating wedding day, two families, the Tetherlys and the Copakens, find their lives unraveled by unthinkable...
| Author | Sue Miller |
| ISBN | 0307264211 |
Four unforgettable characters beckon you into this spellbinding new novel from Sue Miller, the author of 2008’s heralded best seller The Senator’s Wife. First among them is Wilhelmina—Billy—Gertz, as small as a child, fiercely independent, powerfully committed to her work as a playwright....
| Author | Robb Forman Dew |
| ISBN | 0316889504 |
After teaching and raising her family for most of her life, Agnes Scofield realizes that she is truly weary of the routine her life has become. But how, at 51, can she establish an identity apart from what has so long defined her?
Often eloquent, sometimes blunt, and always full of fire, The Scofield...
| Author | Susan Henderson |
| ISBN | 0061984035 |
An extraordinary debut from a talented new voice, Up from the Blue untangles the year in Tillie's life that changed everything: 1975, the year her mother disappeared.
Tillie Harris's life is in disarray—her husband is away on business, the boxes in her new home aren't unpacked, and the telephone...
| Author | Gish Jen |
| ISBN | 0307272192 |
From the much-loved author of Who’s Irish? and The Love Wife, a world-sized novel set in a small New England town.
Hattie Kong—the spirited offspring of a descendant of Confucius and an American missionary to China—has, in her fiftieth year of living in the United States, lost both her...
| Author | Scott Spencer |
| ISBN | 0061466557 |
“A smart, haunting thriller with bass reverb and a pounding heart.”
—Jayne Anne Phillips, author of the National Book Award finalist Lark and Termite
Scott Spencer, the acclaimed author of Endless Love and A Ship Made of Paper, reaffirms his storytelling mastery with Man in the...
| Author | Mary Burg Whitcomb |
| ISBN | 0811820041 |
Velvet is odd. Instead of dolls that talk and cry, Velvet brings a milkweed pod for show and tell. She wins the class art contest using only an eight-pack of crayons. She likes to collect rocks. Even her name is strange-Velvet! But as the school year unfolds, the things Velvet does and the things that Velvet...
| Author | John Casey |
| ISBN | 0375410252 |
It’s been more than two decades since Spartina won the National Book Award and was acclaimed by critics as being “possibly the best American novel . . . since The Old Man and the Sea” (The New York Times Book Review), but in this extraordinary follow-up novel barely any time has passed in the magical...
| Author | Teddy Jones |
| ISBN | 1626770034 |
As a winter storm bears down on the Texas Panhandle in December, 2004, Willa Jackson embarks on a plan to maintain her independence and fully realize her artistic talent. Her first encounter on this course, with her daughter, Melanie Banks, proves that accomplishing those ends as she ages past her present...
| Author | Robert Hellenga |
| ISBN | 1608192628 |
A novel packed with wit, substance, and emotional depth, Snakewoman of Little Egypt delivers Robert Hellenga at the top of his form.
On the morning of her release from prison, Sunny, who grew up in a snakehandling church in the Little Egypt region of Southern Illinois, rents a garage apartment...
| Author | Mona Simpson |
| ISBN | 0307273520 |
A wonderfully provocative and appealing novel, from the much-loved author of Anywhere But Here and A Regular Guy, her first in ten years. It tells the story of two women whose lives entwine and unfold behind the glittery surface of Hollywood.
Claire, a composer and a new mother, comes to LA so...
| Author | Robin Pilcher |
| ISBN | 0312354355 |
In the vein of Maeve Binchy, Rosamunde Pilcher, and Nicholas Sparks, New York Times bestselling author Robin Pilcher returns with his most enchanting novel yet, filled with captivating twists and turns of heart. When Claire Barclay receives news that her beloved stepfather has had a stroke, she’s...
