Anita Shreve Books In Order

Fortune’s Rocks Quartet Books In Publication Order

  1. The Pilot’s Wife (1998)
  2. Fortune’s Rocks (1999)
  3. Sea Glass (2002)
  4. Body Surfing (2007)

Fortune’s Rocks Quartet Books In Chronological Order

  1. Fortune’s Rocks (1999)
  2. Sea Glass (2002)
  3. The Pilot’s Wife (1998)
  4. Body Surfing (2007)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Eden Close (1989)
  2. Strange Fits of Passion (1991)
  3. Where or When (1993)
  4. Resistance (1995)
  5. The Weight of Water (1997)
  6. The Last Time They Met (2001)
  7. All He Ever Wanted (2003)
  8. Light on Snow (2004)
  9. A Wedding in December (2005)
  10. Testimony (2008)
  11. A Change in Altitude (2009)
  12. Rescue (2010)
  13. Stella Bain (2013)
  14. The Stars Are Fire (2017)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. Working Woman: A Guide to Fitness and Health (1986)
  2. Dr. Balter’s Child Sense (1987)
  3. Remaking Motherhood: How Working Mothers and Shaping Our Children’s Future (1987)
  4. Who’s in Control: Dr. Balter’s Guide to Discipline Without Combat (1988)
  5. Women Together, Women Alone (1989)

Fortune’s Rocks Quartet Book Covers

Fortune’s Rocks Quartet Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Anita Shreve Books Overview

The Pilot’s Wife

Who can guess what a woman will do when the unthinkable becomes her reality? From the bestselling author of THE WEIGHT OF WATER, this enormously gripping and powerfully wrought novel asks the questions we all have about ourselves and definitively places Anita Shreve among the ranks of the best novelists writing today. Being married to a pilot has taught Kathryn Lyons to be ready for emergencies, but nothing has prepared her for the late night knock on her door and the news of her husband’s fatal crash. As Kathryn struggles through her grief, she is forced to confront disturbing rumours about the man she loved and the life that she took for granted. Torn between her impulse to protect her husband’s memory and her desire to know the truth, Kathryn sets off to find out if she ever really knew the man who was her husband. In her determination to test the truth of her marriage, she faces shocking revelations about the secrets a man can keep and the actions a woman is willing to take.

Fortune’s Rocks

Hester Prynne never had it so good! The year is 1899, and Olympia Biddeford, the headstrong daughter of a Boston Brahmin family, has decided to test the limits of her cloistered world. Spending the summer at her father’s New Hampshire estate, the teenage hero*ine of Fortune’s Rocks is entranced with the visiting salon of artists, writers, and lawyers. She’s especially captivated, however, by John Haskell, a charismatic physician who ministers to the blue collar community in the nearby mill towns. This middle aged Good Samaritan hires Olympia to assist him as a nurse, and their collaboration soon evolves into a fiery love affair. Alas, it’s only a matter of weeks before this passionate exercise in managed care is exposed with disastrous consequences for the young, impregnated hero*ine. Even her adoring father now considers her ‘an overplump sixteen year old girl whose judgment can no longer be trusted,’ and insists that she break off her relationship:’There is nothing more to be said on this subject,’ he says. She bites her lip to keep from crying out further. She holds the arms of her chair so tightly she later will have cramps in her fingers. She will refuse to obey him, she thinks. She will accept his implied challenge and set off on her own. But in the next moment, she asks herself: How will she be able to do that? Without her father’s support, she cannot hope to survive. And if she herself does not survive, then a child cannot live.’In the end, Anita Shreve’s seventh novel is a polished, supremely entertaining variation on Wuthering Heights, with Olympia and Haskell sitting in for Catherine and Heathcliff. The author did some meticulous research for her New England background, which gives this study of one particular wayward woman some extra historical heft. Some readers may find the plot twists a bit pat. And despite Olympia’s efforts to be an independent woman, she overcomes her trials largely as a result of her family’s wealth and station, which takes the edge off Shreve’s feminist message. Still, Fortune’s Rocks is a romance in the classic sense of the word, and should be enjoyed as such, unless the reader is absolutely allergic to happy endings. Ted Leventhal

Sea Glass

From its opening pages, Anita Shreve’s Sea Glass surrounds the reader in the surprisingly rich feeling of the New Hampshire coast in winter. Vividly evoking the life of the coastal community at the beginning of the Great Depression, Sea Glass shifts through the multiple points of view of six principal characters; it’s a skillfully created story of braided lives that bounces easily even inevitably from character to character. We learn how these lives come together following the stock market crash of 1929 and about the struggles of mill workers on the starkly beautiful New Hampshire coast during the following year. At the novel’s center is the story of Honora Beecher, a young newlywed who compulsively collects Sea Glass along the beach as she collects unexpected friendship in her new beachside community, and Francis, a boy who discovers a father figure in the towering character of McDermott, an Irish mill worker, at a time when he most needs direction. Each character finds unexpected new purpose beyond the struggle to survive during that turbulent year among the dunes. First their lives barely touch, then they intersect, and finally they become inextricably bound. By the powerful and unexpected final scenes of the story, every point of view, every brilliant shard of life depends deeply on all the others. It is a very satisfying read confidently told and deeply felt with as many subtle colors and reflections as the Sea Glass that permeates the narrative. Paul Ford

Body Surfing

The beach house in New Hampshire which figured in Anita Shreve’sThe Pilot’s Wife, Fortune’s Rocks, and Sea Glass is once again featured in Body Surfing. This time, it is the summer home of the Edwards family, Anna and Mark and daughter Julie. Mrs. Edwards has great hopes for Julie, who is ‘slow,’ so she hires Sydney to tutor her, in preparation for her senior year. There are two older brothers, Jeff and Ben, whose arrival changes the household dynamic considerably. Once again, Shreve revisits the minefield of love and betrayal that she has explored so well in her best novels. Sydney is 29, twice married, once divorced, and once a widow. She is floundering, not sure she wants to go back to school, accepting whatever job comes along and then moving on. She answers the ad for a tutor and finds herself in the Edwards household, where she discovers that Julie has undiscovered artistic talent. Mrs. Edwards dislikes her instantly, is dismissive, and treats her like a servant. Mr. Edwards befriends her, shows her his roses and talks to her about the history of the house, giving the reader a rundown of the role the house has played in prior novels. Sydney, Jeff, and Ben go Body Surfing late one night and Sydney is sure that Ben has tried to grope her underwater. She takes immediate umbrage at this and treats him coldly thereafter. Shreve’s other work has a steady narrative flow, but this novel is episodic and disjointed. There is the the arrival of Jeff’s girlfriend, her departure, an evening when Julie comes home drunk and won’t talk about it, and a liaison between Sydney and Jeff which leads to the complications that eventually define the novel. There is a twist at the end, involving the brothers, that is divisive, destructive and rather hard to believe. While this is not Shreve’s best effort, because the characters are not well defined, it is worth reading her take on what happens to people when they compete for love. Valerie Ryan

Eden Close

A compelling tale of edgy, small town emotions, lingering obsession, and romantic salvation. Andrew, after many years, returns to his hometown to attend his mother’s funeral. Planning to remain only a few days, he is drawn into the tragic legacy of his childhood friend and beautiful girl next door, Eden Close. An adopted child, Eden had learned to avoid the mother who did not want her and to please the father who did. She also aimed to please Andrew and his friends, first by being one of the boys and later by seducing them. Then one hot night, Andrew was awakened by gunshots and piercing screams from the next farm: Mr. Close had been killed and Eden blinded. Now, seventeen years later, Andrew begins to uncover the grisly story to unravel the layers of thwarted love between the husband, wife, and tormented girl. And as the truth about Eden’s past comes to light, so too does Andrew’s strange and binding attachment to her reveal itself.

Strange Fits of Passion

The reader is left to uncover the truth in this labryinth of a tale, a riveting story told within the framework of one reporter’s notes and a woman’s letters from prison. Everyone believes that Maureen and Harrold English, two successful New York City journalists, have a happy, stable marriage. It’s the early ’70s and no one discusses or even suspects domestic abuse. But after Maureen suffers another brutal beating, she flees New York with her infant daughter and seeks refuge in a small coastal town in Maine. The weeks pass slowly, and just as Maureen begins to heal physically and emotionally, Harrold finds her, bringing the story to a violent, unforgettable end.

Where or When

What would you do if, out of the blue, you received a letter from your first love? Sian Richards sees no reason why she can’t write back to Charles Callaghan After all, it’s been thirty years and they are both married with families. But an innocent correspondence becomes a dangerous intimacy. Swept up in the past and consumed by an obsessive love, Charles and Sian risk everything to be together. Charles Callahan, a 44 year old Rhode Island insurance broker, is a man who has deep feelings but finds himself emotionally thwarted in the life he leads. He loves his three children, but his marriage to Harriet is passionless. When he chances upon a photograph of poet Sian Richards in the Sunday newspaper, his life changes. Sian was his first love, 31 years ago at summer camp. Sian, married to melancholy, reserved Stephen, has suffered the loss of a child, and, after some hesitation, she allows herself to turn to Charles with the same urgency he feels for her. Shreve evokes this emotional buildup deftly, complete with stirring old songs and flashbacks to teenaged love.

Resistance

This tale of impossible love told with the same narrative grace and keen eye for human emotion that have distinguished all of Anita Shreve’s cherished bestsellers leads us into a harrowing world where forbidden passions have catastrophic consequences. In a Na*zi occupied Belgian village, Claire Daussois, the wife of a Resistance worker, shelters a wounded American bomber pilot in a secret attic hideaway. As she nurses him back to health, Claire is drawn into an affair that seems strong enough to conquer all until the brutal realities of war intrude, shattering every idea she ever had about love, trust, and betrayal.

The Weight of Water

More than a century after someone murders two people on a small island off the coast of New Hampshire, a photographer comes to shoot a photo essay about the famous crime. As she investigates the bleak, isolated lives of the victims, she comes to identify with their spiritual loneliness. For her own marriage is falling apart, crumbling into nights of heavy drinking and terrible silences. Incited by the chaotic forces that blasted the island years ago, this modern woman is drawn inexorably toward the violence of the past, toward choices that will destroy all she has ever valued. With exquisitely stylish prose and arresting psychological insight, Anita Shreve captures one woman’s journey into the farthest extremes of emotion. ‘A stunning tale…
. There is plenty for the reader to ponder and savor in this accomplished inquiry into the ravages of love.’ Los Angeles Times

The Last Time They Met

A man and a woman sustain a life long passionate relationship even though they have been together only three times. At a literary festival in Toronto, Linda Fallon encounters the man who was once at the center of her life: Thomas Janes, the famous poet. Since last seeing him, she has married, given birth, and been widowed. Thomas appearance rocks Linda, raises questions she had long abandoned, and inspires new dreams. The Last Time They Met moves backward to explore Lindas life years earlier, at age 26, when an affair with Thomas shattered her life, and at age 17, when they first met. In this mesmerizing novel, Shreve examines the resilience of emotion and the extraordinary repercussions a single choice, even a single word, can have over a lifetime. The film version of The Weight of Water, starring Sean Penn, Elizabeth Hurley and Sarah Polley, will be in theaters in 2001.

All He Ever Wanted

A man escaping from a hotel fire sees a woman standing beneath a tree. He approaches her and sets in motion a series of events that will change his life forever. Years later, traveling from New England to Florida by train, he reflects back on his obsession with this unknown and ultimately unknowable woman his courtship of her, his marriage to her, and the unforgivable act that ripped their family apart. Spanning three decades from 1899 to 1933, All He Ever Wanted gives us a tale of marriage, betrayal, and the search for redemption. It has the unmatched attention to details of character, place, and emotion that have made Anita Shreve one of America’s best loved and bestselling novelists.

Light on Snow

‘I watched my father run forward in his snowshoes the way one sometimes does in dreams, unable to make the legs move fast enough. I ran to the place where he knelt. I looked down into the sleeping bag. A tiny face gazed up at me, the eyes wide despite their many folds. The baby was wrapped in a bloody towel, and its lips were blue.’ The events of a December afternoon on which a father and his daughter find an abandoned infant in the snow will forever alter eleven year old Nicky Dillon’s understanding of the world which she is about to enter and the adults who inhabit it: a father who has taken great pains to remove himself from society in order to put behind him an unthinkable tragedy; a young woman who must live with the consequences of the terrible choices she has made; and a detective whose cleverness is superseded only by his sense of justice. Written from the point of view of thirty year old Nicky as she recalls the vivid images of that fateful December, hers is a tale of love and courage, of tragedy and redemption, and of the ways in which the human heart always seeks to heal itself.

A Wedding in December

Massachusetts, seven former schoolmates gather for a wedding. Nora, the owner of the inn, has recently had to reinvent her life following the death of her husband. Avery, who still hears echoes from a horrific event at Kidd Academy twenty six years ago, has made a life for himself in Toronto with his wife and two sons. Agnes, now a history teacher at Kidd is a still single woman who longs to tell a secret she cannot reveal to the others, a secret that would stun them all. Bridget, the mother of a 15 year old boy, has agreed to marry Bill, an old high school lover whom she has recently re met, despite uncertainties about her health and future. Indeed, it is Bill who passionately wants this wedding and who has brought everyone together for an astonishing weekend of revelation and recrimination, forgiveness and redemption. This is Anita Shreve’s most ambitious and moving novel to date, probing into human motivation with the grace and skill that have made her one of the finest novelists of her time Boston Herald.

Testimony

Now available as a value priced edition! At a New England boarding school, a sex scandal is about to break. Even more shocking than the sexual acts themselves is the fact that they were caught on videotape. A Pandora’s box of revelations, the tape triggers a chorus of voices those of the men, women, teenagers, and parents involved in the scandal that details the ways in which lives can be derailed or destroyed in one foolish moment. Writing with a pace and intensity surpassing even her own greatest work, Anita Shreve delivers in Testimony a gripping emotional drama with the impact of a thriller. No one more compellingly explores the dark impulses that sway the lives of seeming innocents, the needs and fears that drive ordinary men and women into intolerable dilemmas, and the ways in which our best intentions can lead to our worst transgressions. 2009

A Change in Altitude

Margaret and Patrick have been married just a few months when they set off on what they hope will be a great adventure a year living in Kenya. Margaret quickly realizes there is a great deal she doesn’t know about the complex mores of her new home, and about her own husband. A British couple invites the newlyweds to join on a climbing expedition to Mount Kenya, and they eagerly agree. But during their harrowing ascent, a horrific accident occurs. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Margaret struggles to understand what happened on the mountain and how these events have transformed her and her marriage, perhaps forever.A Change in Altitude illuminates the inner landscape of a couple, the irrevocable impact of tragedy, and the elusive nature of forgiveness. With stunning language and striking emotional intensity, Anita Shreve transports us to the exotic panoramas of Africa and into the core of our most intimate relationships.

Rescue

A rookie paramedic pulls a young woman alive from her totaled car, a first Rescue that begins a lifelong tangle of love and wreckage. Sheila Arsenault is a gorgeous enigma–streetwise and tough-talking, with haunted eyes, fierce desires, and a never-look-back determination. Peter Webster, as straight an arrow as they come, falls for her instantly and entirely. Soon Sheila and Peter are embroiled in an intense love affair, married, and parents to a baby daughter. Like the crash that brought them together, it all happened so fast.



Can you ever really save another person? Eighteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering dangerously off track, and for the first time in their ordered existence together, Webster fears for her future. His work shows him daily every danger the world contains, how wrong everything can go in a second. All the love a father can give a daughter is suddenly not enough.



Sheila’s sudden return may be a godsend–or it may be exactly the wrong moment for a lifetime of questions and anger and longing to surface anew. What tore a young family apart? Is there even worse damage ahead? The questions lifted up in Anita Shreve’s utterly enthralling new novel are deep and lasting, and this is a novel that could only have been written by a master of the human heart.

Who’s in Control: Dr. Balter’s Guide to Discipline Without Combat

Here is a practical, modern guide to the most difficult aspect of child rearing: discipline. Dr. Balter provides age specific discipline goals, techniques and instructions on the most common discipline issues, such as how to select appropriate punishments, alternatives to yelling, and preventing power conflicts.

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