Carol Shields Books In Order

Novels

  1. Small Ceremonies (1976)
  2. The Box Garden (1979)
  3. A Fairly Conventional Woman (1982)
  4. Mary Swann (1987)
  5. A Celibate Season (1991)
  6. The Republic of Love (1991)
  7. The Stone Diaries (1993)
  8. Larry’s Party (1997)
  9. Unless (2002)
  10. Duet (2003)

Omnibus

  1. Happenstance (1980)

Collections

  1. Various Miracles (1985)
  2. The Orange Fish (1989)
  3. Fanfare (1999)
  4. Dressing up for the Carnival (2000)
  5. Thirteen Hands and Other Plays (2002)
  6. The Collected Stories (2004)

Plays

  1. Departures & Arrivals (1988)
  2. Fashion, Power, Guilt and the Charity of Families (1993)
  3. Anniversary (1998)
  4. Thirteen Hands (1998)

Anthologies edited

  1. Dropped Threads (2001)
  2. Dropped Threads 2 (2003)

Non fiction

  1. Susanna Moodie (1977)
  2. Jane Austen (2001)
  3. The Staircase Letters (2007)
  4. A Memoir of Friendship (2007)
  5. Startle and Illuminate (2016)

Novels Book Covers

Omnibus Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Plays Book Covers

Anthologies edited Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Carol Shields Books Overview

Small Ceremonies

Wife, mother, and biographer, Judith Gill finds her own life overshadowed by her need to observe and understand, becoming a woman whose world is shaped by the actions of others, until she discovers her own role as a translator and celebrant of life’s Small Ceremonies.

The Box Garden

Charleen, a divorced woman attending her widowed mother’s second wedding, makes startling discoveries about other family members attending the reunion and achieves a new understanding of herself and her own life.

Mary Swann

The lives of four amazingly different individuals become intertwined with that of Mary Swann, a rural Canadian poet of delicate verse whose genuine talent is only discovered after she is brutally murdered.

A Celibate Season

Faced with a job related ten month separation, Jocelyn and Charles choose to maintain contact through letters an economic decision that paves the way for two very entertaining sides of the same story.

The Republic of Love

The acclaimed author of The Orange Fish and Swann writes a delicious, sophisticated novel of modern romance about a folklorist with a penchant for the past who falls in love with a off beat, spontaneous disc jockey, who’s definitely wrapped up in the present. ‘A touching, elegantly funny, lucious work of fiction.’ New York Times Book Review.

The Stone Diaries

The Stone Diaries is Carol Shields’s most celebrated work and one of the most critically acclaimed and successful novels of the past two decades. A fictional autobiography of an ordinary woman, this multi award winning book Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Governor General’s Award serves as a record of the last century. Daisy Goodwill is on a journey of self discovery. From her last days in a Florida nursing home she looks back in an attempt to make sense of her life story. Her birth in a turn of the century farmhouse is a shock, born to a woman so obese she doesn’t even realize she is pregnant. Widowed on her honeymoon after her husband takes his own life, there is another marriage, children and a beloved hobby that becomes a career, of sorts. It is a life like any other, filled with the richness of human relations and the sting of disappointments both big and small. The beauty of this work lies in the details, the tiny brushstrokes of character and setting, at which Carol Shields is the undisputed master. This engrossing abridged recording was first broadcast on CBC Radio in 1995. Carol Shields both reviewed and approved the abridgement and the recording.

Larry’s Party

At 26, Larry Weller thinks his future lies in flowers. He still lives at home, has a new career as a floral designer, and a girlfriend about whom he is somewhat ambivalent. What Larry is about to discover is that life is never a straightforward path. His girlfriend becomes pregnant. They marry and set off for their honeymoon in England where Larry stumbles upon what will become his greatest passion in life. He takes up the creation and construction of meticulous mazes, which leads him down blind alleys and dead ends, failed marriages and changing expectations. It all comes together in an unforgettable dinner party in this warm and witty coming of middle age novel. Published four years after The Stone Diaries, Larry’s Party won the UK s Orange Prize for fiction and is one of Carol Shields s most critically successful works. Published in numerous editions by Penguin, the book has now sold more than 100,000 copies in the United States alone. This audio recording, first released in audiocassette Canada in 1998, received wide critical acclaim in its original edition.

Unless

I’m not interested, the way some people are, in being sad. I’ve had a look, and there’s nothing down that road. Well now! What about the ripping sound behind my eyes, the starchy tearing of fabric, end to end; what about the need I have to curl up my knees when I sleep? For all of her life, 44 year old Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light ‘summertime’ fiction. But this placid existence is cracked wide open when her beloved eldest daughter, Norah, drops out to sit on a gritty street corner, silent but for the sign around her neck that reads ‘GOODNESS.’ Reta’s search for what drove her daughter to such a desperate statement turns into an unflinching and surprisingly funny meditation on where we find meaning and hope. Warmth, passion and wisdom come together in Shields’ remarkably supple prose. Unless, a harrowing but ultimately consoling story of one family’s anguish and healing, proves her mastery of extraordinary fictions about ordinary life.

The Orange Fish

Twelve short stories by Pulitzer Prizewinner Carol Shields.

Fanfare

An anthology of stories with musical themes initially broadcast on BBC Radio 3 by contemporary authors who include William Boyd, Rose Tremain, Penelope Fitzgerald, Christopher Hope and John Mortimer.

Dressing up for the Carnival

A new short story collection from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Stone Diaries and Larry’s PartyCarol Shields ‘has a knack for turning the ordinary into the extraordinary’New York Daily News. And nowhere more than in Dressing up for the Carnival, which distills all her elegance, wisdom, and insouciant humor into short stories that read more like nugget novels. Through them all runs Shields’s preoccupation with identity. In the title story a compacted day in the life of the world a procession of characters try on new selves; in ‘Dressing Down’ a YMCA director sheds his suited self one month a year in a nudist enclave. Yet these twenty two stories, and their quiet epiphanies, contrast with each other more sharply. The lyricism of ‘Weather’ and the bittersweet sexuality of ‘Eros.’ The wicked skewering of pompous academic conversation in ‘The Next Best Kiss’ and the odd, straightfaced whimsy of ‘Flatties.’ And in ‘The Scarf’ new for this collection the realities of a fledgling author’s book tour. Playful, graceful, acute yet tender, Dressing up for the Carnival is Carol Shields at her most accomplished and appealing. It ‘reminds us again why literature matters’ The New York Times Book Review.

The Collected Stories

Carol Shields, the Pulitzer Prize winner author of the novels Unless, The Stone Diaries and Larry’s Party was also a renowned short story writer. Now readers can enjoy all three of Carol Shields s short story collections Various Miracles, The Orange Fish and Dressing Up for the Carnival in one volume, along with the previously unpublished story, Segue, her last. With an eye for the smallest of telling details a woman applying her lipstick so the shape of pale raspberry fits perfectly the face she knows by heart and a willingness to explore the most fundamental relationships and the wildest of coincidences, Shields illuminates the absurdities and miracles that grace all our lives. From a couple who experiences a world without weather, to the gentle humor of an elderly widow mowing her lawn while looking back on a life of passion, to a young woman abandoned by love and clinging to a slender handrail of hope, Shields s enormous sympathy for her characters permeates her fiction. Playful, charming, acutely observed and generous of spirit, this collection of stories will delight and enchant Carol Shields fans everywhere. Excerpt from The Collected Stories of Carol ShieldsLet me say it: I am an aging woman of despairing good cheer just look into the imaginary camera lens and watch me as I make the Sunday morning transaction over the bread, then the flowers, my straw tote from our recent holiday in Jamaica, my smile, my upturned sixty seven year old voice, a voice so crying out and clad with familiarity that, in fact, I can t hear it anymore myself, thank God; my ears are blocked. Lately everything to do with my essence has become transparent, neutral: Good morning, Jane Sexton smiles to one and all such a friendly, down to earth woman. What a perfect fall day. What glorious blooms! Why Mr. Henning, this bread is still warm! Can this be true? From the Hardcover edition.

Dropped Threads

The hidden emotional territory of women’s lives from the joys of belly dancing to the agony of caring for a dying child is revealed in the pages of Dropped Threads: What We Aren’t Told. Editors Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson bring together 34 eclectic and engaging pieces by renowned authors e.g. Margaret Atwood and Bonnie Burnard as well as women whose day jobs include politics, child raising, and cattle ranching. Marni Jackson’s ‘Tuck Me In’ is an entertaining account of conflicts with a teenage son who considers shampoo a culturally imposed artifact. Perhaps the most powerful essay is ‘Edited Version,’ in which Isla James describes her dying child’s last days at home…
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Dropped Threads 2

The idea for Dropped Threads: What We Aren’t Told came up between Carol Shields and longtime friend Marjorie Anderson over lunch. It appeared that after decades of feminism, the women’s network still wasn’t able to prevent women being caught off guard by life. There remained subjects women just didn’t talk about, or felt they couldn’t talk about. Holes existed in the fabric of women’s discourse, and they needed examining. They asked thirty four women to write about moments in life that had taken them by surprise or experiences that received too little discussion, and then they compiled these pieces into a book. It became an instant number one bestseller, a book clubs’ favourite and a runaway success. Dropped Threads, says Anderson, ‘tapped into a powerful need to share personal stories about life’s defining moments of surprise and silence.’ Readers recognized themselves in these honest and intimate stories; there was something universal in these deeply personal accounts. Other stories and suggestions poured in. Dropped Threads would clearly be an ongoing project. Like the first volume, Dropped Threads 2 features stories by well known novelists and journalists such as Jane Urquhart, Susan Swan and Shelagh Rogers, but also many excellent new writers including teachers, mothers, a civil servant, a therapist. This triumphant follow up received a starred first review in Quill and Quire magazine, which called it compassionate and unflinching. The book deals with such difficult topics as loss, depression, disease, widowhood, violence, and coming to terms with death. Several stories address some of the darker sides of motherhood: A mother describes how, while sleep deprived and in a miserable marriage, she is shocked to find infanticide crossing her mind. Another woman recounts a memory of her alcoholic mother demanding the children prove their loyalty in a terrifying way. A woman desperate for children refers to the bleak truth as: ‘Another Christmas of feeling barren.’ Narrating the fertility treatment she undergoes, the hopes dashed, she is amusing in retrospect and yet brutally honest. While they deal with loss and trauma, the pieces show the path to some kind of acceptance, showing the authors determination to learn from pain and pass on the wisdom gained. The volume also covers the rewards of learning to be a parent, choosing to remain single, or fitting in as a lesbian parent. It explores how women feel when something is missing in a friendship, how they experience discrimination, relationship challenges, and other emotions less easily defined but just as close to the bone: Alison Wearing in My Life as a Shadow subtly describes allowing her personality to be subsumed by her boyfriend’s. Pamela Mala Sinha tells how, after suffering a brutal attack, she felt self hatred and a longing for retribution. Dana McNairn talks of her uncomfortable marriage to a man from a different social background: ‘I wanted to fit in with this strange, wondrous family who never raised their voices, never swore and never threw things at one another.’Humour, a confiding tone, and beautiful writing elevate and enliven even the darkest stories. Details bring scenes vividly to life, so we feel we are in the room with Barbara Defago when the doctor tells her she has breast cancer, coolly dividing her life into a ‘before and after.’ Lucid, reflective and poignant, Dropped Threads 2 is for anyone interested in women’s true stories.

Jane Austen

A Pulitzer Prize winning novelist celebrates the life of one of the most renowned and beloved female novelists of all time. In her brilliant fictional biography, The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields created an astonishing portrait of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a modern woman struggling to understand her place in her own life. With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trademarks of her award winning novels, Shields explores the life of a writer whose own novels have engaged and delighted readers for the past two hundred years. Jane Austen reveals both the very private woman and the acclaimed author behind the enduring classics Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. With her forceful insight and gentle wit, she was the ultimate chronicler of the mores and manners of her time as well as a groundbreaking author who would influence many of our greatest contemporary novelists. Who was this woman that created both characters that leap off the page and entertaining plots, yet managed to quietly challenge a strict social order? What gave her the motivation to continue writing when women were excluded from the publishing world? In this compelling and passionate biography, Carol Shields explores the life of this amazing woman: from her early family life in Stevenson, to her later years at Bath, her broken engagement, and her tumultuous relationship with her sister Cassandra.

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