Barnaby Gaitlin was never a bad kid, but he was certainly doing his best to impersonate one. As a teenager, he developed a habit of breaking into other
people’s houses. But he wasn’t interested in the valuable loot–he just liked to read people’s mail, peruse their family albums, and maybe pocket a few personal
mementos. Now almost thirty and divorced, he finds himself working for Rent-aBack, which helps the elderly and infirm move furniture or take down their
Christmas trees. It’s the perfect career for Barnaby: with each job, he’s able to steal a glimpse into a customer’s house and life.

Then Barnaby meets Sophia. Her inherent, unshakeable goodness is totally foreign to him–and irresistible. With small moments of growth, Barnaby struggles
to become the good man he hopes to be, finding that life rarely happens all at once but rather builds over time, patch by patch.

Evie Decker is a shy, awkward high school student living in Pulqua, North Carolina. The one thing that makes her feel less alone is the radio, and one night,
as she’s listening to her usual “Sweetheart Time” program, she hears him for the first time. For Evie, the cool voice of local singer “Drumstrings” Casey is love at
first sound. Casey’s magnetism inspires reserved Evie to take destiny into her own hands. After following him to his next show at the Unicorn Roadhouse, their
worlds collide and their lives become inextricably entwined. But as Casey becomes real–sometimes painfully real–right before Evie’s eyes, Evie discovers that life
with her rock ‘n’ roll idol isn’t all poetic lyrics and high notes.

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize 

“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. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.

Brimming with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler’s work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person.” So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel.

The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else’s?

On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation—something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family’s crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. What caught his fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited older man, a divorcé with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own, and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms.

Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it—how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been—is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel.

As always with Anne Tyler’s novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave. But in Back When We Were Grownups she so sharpens our perceptions and awakens so many untapped feelings that we come away not only refreshed and delighted, but also infinitely wiser.

Unfolding over the course of a single, emotionally fraught day, this stunning novel encompasses a lifetime of dreams, regrets, and reckonings. Maggie and Ira
Moran are on a road trip from Baltimore, Maryland, to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania, to attend the funeral of a friend. Along the way, they reflect on the state of their
marriage and its trials and its triumphs–through their quarrels, their routines, and their ability to tolerate each other’s faults with patience and affection. Where
Maggie is quirky, lovable, and mischievous, Ira is practical, methodical, and mired in reason. What begins as a day trip becomes a revelatory and unexpected
journey as Ira and Maggie rediscover the strength of their bond and the joy of having somebody with whom to share the ride, bumps and all.

Regarded by many as Tyler’s seminal work, Breathing Lessons celebrates the small miracles and magic of truly knowing someone, and evokes
Jane Austen, Emma Straub, and other masters of the literary marriage.

“Tyler is steadily raising a body of fiction of major dimensions.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES

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 Jaremy 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….

NATIONAL BEST SELLER • TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR USA TODAY • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: O Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Times (London)

A charming new novel of self-discovery and second chances from the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Spool of Blue Thread.

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 to look after a young woman she’s never met, her nine-year-old daughter, and their dog, Airplane. This impulsive decision will lead Willa into uncharted territory–surrounded by eccentric neighbors who treat each other like family, she finds solace and fulfillment in unexpected places. A bewitching novel of hope and transformation, Clock Dance gives us Anne Tyler at the height of her powers.

Anne Tyler’s richest, most deeply searching novel–a story about what it is to be an American, and about Iranian-born Maryam Yazdan, who, after 35 years in this country, must finally come to terms with her “outsiderness.”

Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airport – the Donaldsons, a very American couple, and the Yazdans, Maryam’s fully assimilated son and his attractive Iranian wife. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. After the instant babies from distant Asia are delivered, Bitsy Donaldson impulsively invites the Yazdans to celebrate: an “arrival party” that from then on is repeated every year as the two families become more and more deeply intertwined. Even Maryam is drawn in – up to a point. When she finds herself being courted by Bitsy Donaldson’s recently widowed father, all the values she cherishes – her traditions, her privacy, her otherness–are suddenly threatened.

A luminous novel brimming with subtle, funny, and tender observations that immerse us in the challenges of both sides of the American story.

Abandoned by her wanderlusting husband, stoic Pearl raised her three children on her own. Now grown, the siblings are inextricably linked by their memories–
some painful–which hold them together despite their differences. Hardened by life’s disappointments, wealthy and charismatic Cody has turned cruel and
envious. Thrice-married Jenny is errant and passionate. And Ezra, the flawed saint of the family, who stayed at home to look after his mother, runs a restaurant
where he cooks what other people are homesick for, stubbornly yearning for the perfect family he never had. Now gathered during a time of loss, they will
reluctantly unlock the shared secrets of their past and discover if what binds them together is stronger than what tears them apart.

Soulful and redemptive–full of heartbreak and hope–this portrait of a family will remind you why Anne Tyler is one of the most beloved writers working today.

Housewife Charlotte Emory lives a quiet, comfortable existence in Clarion,
Maryland. She has always championed living life as simply as possible, casting off
material things and celebrating the bare essentials. On an unremarkable rainy day,
she decides to simplify her life in a very major way and leave her husband. But
before she goes through with her plan, she runs to the bank, a harmless errand
that throws her simple life and decision into disarray. At the bank, a restless
young man–an escaped convict and former demolition derby driver–takes her
hostage during a robbery. Soon this unlikely pair are on the road and heading
south into an unknown future, and a most unexpected fate.

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author—a funny, joyful, brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one Baltimore family’s foibles, from a boyfriend with a red Chevy in the 1950s up to a longed-for reunion with a grandchild.

“A quietly subversive novel, tackling fundamental assumptions about womanhood, motherhood and female aging.” —Jennifer Haigh, New York Times Book Review

The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family’s orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts’ influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.

Full of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close—yet how unknowable—every family is to itself.

Back home in North Carolina, Ben Joe Hawkes was admittedly
a worrier, but he was also head of the household for his grandmother, his
mother, and his six sisters. In New York, as a law
student, he’s not quite sure what his role should be. So, when his eldest
sister returns home with her baby girl, Ben Joe decides
it’s time to figure himself out by doing what he does best. He heads home
to take care of his family. He’s prepared himself for every
possible outcome but one: What if the women he’s left behind don’t need
him as much as he needs them? Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler wrote
this first novel at age twenty-two and perfectly
captures life on the precipice of adulthood.

BALTIMORE WOMAN DISAPPEARS DURING FAMILY VACATION.” The headlines are all the same: Beloved mother and wife Delia Grinstead was last seen strolling
down the Delaware shore, wearing only a bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked inside. To the best of her family’s knowledge, she
has disappeared without a trace.

But Delia didn’t disappear. She ran.

Exhausted with her routine and everyone else’s plans for her, Delia needed an out, a chance to make a new life for herself and to become a different person. The
new Delia can let go of all the hurt and resentment that left her stuck in her past. As she eagerly sheds the pieces of herself she no longer needs, Delia discovers
feelings of passion and wonder she’d long since forgotten. The thrill of walking away from it all leads to a newfound sense of self and the feeling that she is,
finally, the star of her own life story.

As a hardware store manager with seven daughters and a wife, Morgan Gower craves escape and daydreams of who he could be in another life–a banjoist, a science-fiction author, a preacher, a
riverboat gambler. With his family demanding he wake up from his midlife crisis and face reality, Morgan isn’t sure he’ll ever see any of those dreams come true.

Then he meets newlyweds Emily and Leon, who are putting on a puppet show at a local fair, and is instantly enamored by their charm and creativity. They are full of the life he craves. But right
after the performance, Emily goes into premature labor, and Morgan jumps at the chance to be a doctor for the day, regardless of the consequences. As Morgan learns more about the young
couple, he dreads returning to his dreary life and discovers that the best dreams in life aren’t those you wish for but those you make happen … by any means necessary.

From the incomparable Anne Tyler, a wise, gently humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about a schoolteacher, who has been forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life.

Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn’t bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new, spare, and efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.

His effort to recover the moments of his life that have been stolen from him leads him on an unexpected detour. What he needs is someone who can do the remembering for him. What he gets is—well, something quite different.

We all know a Liam. In fact, there may be a little of Liam in each of us. Which is why Anne Tyler’s lovely novel resonates so deeply.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

“Tyler’s novels are always worth scooping up—but especially this gently amusing soother, right now.” —NPR

From the beloved Anne Tyler, a sparkling new novel about misperception, second chances, and the sometimes elusive power of human connection.

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 thirties 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.

An intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who finds those around him just out of reach, and a funny, joyful, deeply compassionate story about seeing the world through new eyes, Redhead by the Side of the Road is a triumph, filled with Anne Tyler’s signature wit and gimlet-eyed observation.

Ian Bedloe is the ideal teenage son, leading a cheery, apple-pie life with his family in Baltimore. That is, until a careless and vicious rumor leads to a
devastating tragedy. Imploding from guilt, Ian believes he is the one responsible for the tragedy. No longer a star athlete with a bright future, and desperately
searching for salvation, he stumbles across a storefront with a neon sign that simply reads: CHURCH OF THE SECOND CHANCE.

Ian has always viewed his penance as a burden. But through the power of faith and the love of family, he begins to view it as a gift. After years spent trying to
atone for his foolish mistakes, Ian finds forgiveness and peace in the life he builds for himself.

Through the syncopated rhythms of the ragtime era to the thumping, rocking beats of the 1970s, generations of Pecks have maintained a determined steadiness. Adamantly middle class–Peck-proud, as the family slogan goes–they are quick to sweep under the rug those members who do not live up to their standards. Maybe that’s why Caleb Peck took off with his violincello as a boy? Sixty years later, his brother Daniel is still wondering. No longer willing to live without answers, he turns to his daughter-in-law, Justine, another Peck family eccentric. A studied tarot card reader, Justine comes across one message over and over in the cards: change is coming. With Daniel’s help, she’s hoping to find the courage to embrace whatever happens next.

An unlikely pair struggling against a stifling family, Daniel and Justine believe they’ll find freedom in just the right mix of magic, music, and mystery.

In this irresistible novel, Anne Tyler explores the slippery alchemy of attracting opposites, and the struggle to rebuild one’s life after unspeakable tragedy. Travel
writer Macon Leary hates travel, adventure, surprises, and anything outside of his routine. Immobilized by grief, Macon is becoming increasingly prickly and alone,
anchored by his solitude and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts. Then he meets Muriel, an eccentric dog trainer too optimistic to let
Macon disappear into himself. Despite Macon’s best efforts to remain insulated, Muriel upends his solitary, systemized life, catapulting him into the center of a
messy, beautiful love story he never imagined. A fresh and timeless tale of unexpected bliss, The Accidental Tourist showcases Tyler’s talents for making characters–and their relationships–feel both real and magical.

From the inimitable Anne Tyler, a rich and compelling novel about a mismatched marriage—and its consequences, spanning three generations.

They seemed like the perfect couple—young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment Pauline, a stranger to the Polish Eastern Avenue neighborhood of Baltimore (though she lived only twenty minutes away), walked into his mother’s grocery store, Michael was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervor, they are propelled into a hasty wedding. But they never should have married.

Pauline, impulsive, impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious, judgmental, proceeds deliberately. While other young marrieds, equally ignorant at the start, seemed to grow more seasoned, Pauline and Michael remain amateurs. In time their foolish quarrels take their toll. Even when they find themselves, almost thirty years later, loving, instant parents to a little grandson named Pagan, whom they rescue from Haight-Ashbury, they still cannot bridge their deep-rooted differences. Flighty Pauline clings to the notion that the rifts can always be patched. To the unyielding Michael, they become unbearable.

From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayered apparel of later years, Anne Tyler captures the evocative nuances of everyday life during these decades with such telling precision that every page brings smiles of recognition. Throughout, as each of the competing voices bears witness, we are drawn ever more fully into the complex entanglements of family life in this wise, embracing, and deeply perceptive novel.

Anne Tyler gives us a wise, haunting, and deeply moving new novel in which she explores how a middle-aged man, ripped apart by the death of his wife, is gradually restored by her frequent appearances—in their house, on the roadway, in the market.
 
Crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron spent his childhood fending off a sister who wants to manage him. So when he meets Dorothy, a plain, outspoken, self-dependent young woman, she is like a breath of fresh air. Unhesitatingly he marries her, and they have a relatively happy, unremarkable marriage. But when a tree crashes into their house and Dorothy is killed, Aaron feels as though he has been erased forever. Only Dorothy’s unexpected appearances from the dead help him to live in the moment and to find some peace.
 
Gradually he discovers, as he works in the family’s vanity-publishing business, turning out titles that presume to guide beginners through the trials of life, that maybe for this beginner there is a way of saying goodbye.
 
A beautiful, subtle exploration of loss and recovery, pierced throughout with Anne Tyler’s humor, wisdom, and always penetrating look at human foibles.

Mrs. Emerson, widowed with seven adult children, lives alone in her crumbling Victorian mansion outside Baltimore with only a collection of antique clocks to
keep her company. Elizabeth Abbott–twenty-three 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. With wondrous
observations and bittersweet humor, Tyler shows how this unsuspecting young woman becomes the North Star that helps a stumbling, dysfunctional family find its footing.

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 ten-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 unnameable past, but the strange shroud over their home cannot be contained. Soon it’s inching its way toward their neighbors, where brothers Ansel and James will have to confront their own dark secrets if they want to bring their neighborhood back out into the light.

Pulitzer Prize winner and American master Anne Tyler brings us an inspired, witty and irresistible contemporary take on one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies.
 
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 pre-school charges adore her, but their parents don’t always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner. 

Dr. Battista has other problems. After years out in the academic wilderness, he is on the verge of a breakthrough. His research could help millions. There’s only one problem: his brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. And without Pyotr, all would be lost.

When Dr. Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he’s relying – as usual – on Kate to help him. Kate is furious: this time he’s really asking too much. But will she be able to resist the two men’s touchingly ludicrous campaign to bring her around?