(April 2010)

In this breathtaking and beautiful novel, the #1 New York Times bestselling author Anna Quindlen creates an unforgettable portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions.
 

Mary Beth Latham is first and foremost a mother, whose three teenaged children come first, before her career as a landscape gardener, or even her life as the wife of a doctor.  Caring for her family and preserving their everyday life is paramount.  And so, when one of her sons, Max, becomes depressed, Mary Beth becomes focused on him, and is blindsided by a shocking act of violence. What happens afterwards is a testament to the power of a woman’s love and determination, and to the invisible line of hope and healing that connects one human being with another. Ultimately, in the hands of Anna Quindlen’s mesmerizing prose, Every Last One is a novel about facing every last one of the the things we fear most, about finding ways to navigate a road we never intended to travel, to live a life we never dreamed we’d have to live but must be brave enough to try.

(Source: Random House)

(October 24, 2009)

Assessing a young presidency. Barack Obama campaigned as a populist firebrand but governs like a cerebral consensus builder. The founding fathers wouldn't have it any other way.

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This inspiring collection, which includes Quindlen's 2006 commencement address at Colby College, draws from the best commencement speeches of recent years, revealing important life lessons about navigating successfully through life and being true to oneself. The advice is illuminating, surprising, thought-provoking, and funny. Creating a Life You'll Love is essential reading for everyone who is seeking the secret to living life wisely and well. (March 27, 2009)

"The life of a good dog is like the life of a good person, only shorter and more compressed," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anna Quindlen about her beloved black Labrador retriever, Beau. With her trademark wisdom and humor, Quindlen reflects on how her life has unfolded in tandem with Beau's, and on the lessons she's learned by watching him: to roll with the punches, to measure herself not in terms of the past or the future but of the present, to raise her nose in the air from time to time and, at least metaphorically, holler, "I smell bacon!"

Of the dog that once possessed a catcher's mitt of a mouth, Quindlen reminisces, "there came a time when a scrap thrown in his direction usually bounced unseen off his head. Yet put a pork roast in the oven, and the guy still breathed as audibly as an obscene caller. The eyes and ears may have gone, but the nose was eternal. And the tail. The tail still wagged, albeit at half-staff. When it stops, I thought more than once, then we'll know."

Heartening and bittersweet, Good Dog. Stay. honors the life of a cherished and loyal friend and offers us a valuable lesson on our four-legged family members: Sometimes an old dog can teach us new tricks.

(Source: Random House)

In her first novel since 2002's Blessings, Quindlen writes about two sisters who discover the true meaning of success and the cost of ambition after a moment of indiscretion changes their relationship forever. Set in New York City, amidst the glitz and glamour of one sister's career-world, and the struggle and heartbreak of the other sister's reality in the Bronx housing projects where she works, Rise and Shine is a story of sisters, the sacrifices made due to tragedy and ambition, and the quest to lead an authentic life. (August 29, 2006)

(Source: Random House)

Quindlen shares wisdom that, perhaps without knowing it, you have longed to hear: about "the perfection trap," the price you pay when you become ensnared in it, and the key to setting yourself free.

Blessings tells the story of Skip Cuddy, caretaker of Lydia Blessing's estate, who finds an abandoned baby and decides he wants to keep her, and of Lydia Blessing, who, for her own reasons, decides to help him. The secrets of the past, how they affect the decisions and lives of people in the present; what makes a person, a life, legitimate or illegitimate, and who decides; the unique resources people find in themselves and in a community -- these are at the center of this novel of love and redemption.

(from: Random House, 2002)

In A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Anna Quindlen guides us with an understanding that comes from knowing how to see the view, the richness in living. Her mother died when Quindlen was nineteen: "It was the dividing line between seeing the world in black and white, and in Technicolor. The lights came on for the darkest possible reason....I learned something enduring, in a very short period of time, about life. And that was that it was glorious, and that you had no business taking it for granted."

After caring for her mother during her final, painful battle with terminal cancer, Ellen Gulden discovers many surprising things about her mother's life and finds herself accused of murdering her mother in a mercy killing. Anna Quindlen writes about love and death, sexuality and betrayal, the triangles within a family, identity, growth, and change. Exploring the ambiguities that make up marriage, character, family, and fate.

Anna Quindlen, one of America's favorite novelists and a Pulitzer Prize" winning columnist, once again gives us wisdom, opinions, insights, and reflections about current events and modern life. With her trademark insight and her special ability to convey the impact public events have on ordinary lives, Quindlen here combines commentary on American society and the world at large with reflections on being a woman, a writer, and a mother. In these pieces, first written for Newsweek and The New York Times, Quindlen encourages us to develop authentic lives, even as she serves as a catalyst for political and social change.

(from: randomhouse.com, 2004)

Black and Blue is a stunning novel about a marriage that begins in passion and becomes violent. After she runs away from her abusive husband, Fran Benedetto lives in fear of discovery, yet also with increasing confidence, freedom and hope, as she struggles to create a new life for herself and her son.

During a pivotal summer, young Maggie Scanlan struggles to deal with the realities of the adult world as she wrestles with the approaching death of her grandfather, parental conflict, and the other trials of her Irish-Italian family.

Living Out Loud is a collection of pieces, culled from the Anna Quindlen's first New York Times column, "Life in the '30s." They offer a shrewd, candid, and witty perspective of contemporary American life.