Cathleen Schine Books In Order

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Alice in Bed (1983)
  2. To the Birdhouse (1990)
  3. Rameau’s Niece (1993)
  4. The Love Letter (1995)
  5. The Evolution of Jane (1998)
  6. She Is Me (2003)
  7. The New Yorkers (2007)
  8. The Three Weissmanns of Westport (2010)
  9. Fin & Lady (2013)
  10. They May Not Mean To, But They Do (2016)
  11. The Grammarians (2019)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Best American Essays 2005 (2005)

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Cathleen Schine Books Overview

Alice in Bed

In ‘a sprightly first novel’ John Updike, The New Yorker, ‘fluently written…
in an engaging voice’ The New York Times Book Review, Schine introduces readers to a convalescent but effervescent hero*ine imprisoned in the confines of a Manhattan hospital who proves that there is sometimes hilarity in the depths of infirmity.

To the Birdhouse

Newlywed Alice Brody appears to have the perfect life. The one fly in the ointment is her mother’s detestable boyfriend, Louie Scifo: champion of incredibly bad taste and a bona fide stalker. After Alice s mother cuts him loose, Louie s determination to win back her love casts Alice s whole family into disarray. So Alice embarks on a mission to rid her mother of Louie once and for all, in this rambunctious comedy of manners that is at once dizzying, hilarious, authentic, and original Washington Post Book World.

Rameau’s Niece

In this delightful novel from an author who ‘has been favored in so many ways by the muse of comedy,’ we meet Margaret Nathan, the brilliant but forgetful author of an unlikely bestseller. Happily married to a benevolently egotistical, slightly dull but sexy professor, Margaret seems blessed until she finds herself seduced by an eighteenthcentury novel she discovers in the library. Wrapped in its lascivious world, Margaret begins to imitate its protagonist, embarking on a hilarious jaunt around Manhattan in search of renewed passion. Will she find fulfillment through her escapades or settle for her husband? Part romantic comedy, part intellectual parody, Rameau’s Niece is wise, affecting, and thoroughly entertaining. New York Review of Books

The Love Letter

An anonymous love letter arrives in Helen MacFarquhar’s mail one summer morning. Written by an unknown lover to a mysterious beloved, the letter becomes Helen’s obsession. The proprietress of a bookstore in a quaint New England town, Helen is content with her calm, controlled world, running her life like a well oiled machine. A merry divorcee with a bright, lovable 11 year old daughter, she has settled happily into a sensible daily routine of selling books, motherhood, and charming the local townsfolk. ‘How do you fall in love?’ the letter asks. To her dismay, Helen finds out. Johnny is the college student who works in Helen’s bookstore, a boy with all the irresistible modesty and arrogance of youth. Helen knows she is too old for him, and too wise, but the letter’s ardor is overpowering and Helen is swept up in an unlikely, but fiercely tender love affair. The Love Letter was a national bestseller appearing on Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, and Village Voice Literary Supplement lists. Published in highly successful hardcover and mass market editions, this classic 1995 novel is being converted to trade paperback to reach the true audience for literary fiction. Plume edition of Cathleen Schine’s previous novel, Rameau’s Niece, continues to sell over ca.

The Evolution of Jane

In four previous novels, Cathleen Schine has enchanted readers with her special brand of brainy wit and wry affection for her endearingly flawed characters. Now the best selling author of The Love Letter takes a hilarious trip to the Galapagos Islands with a comedy of natural selection. Jane Barlow Schwartz is obsessed with one question: why did her best friend Martha stop being her best friend? The two girls, distant cousins, had shared idyllic childhood summers in the New England seaside town of Barlow, named for their family’s founding fathers. Martha was not just Jane’s friend but her idol, her soul mate, her confidante. Then, somewhere along the line, the friendship ended. What went wrong? Was it the family feud, which their parents spoke of only in hushed tones? What did Jane’s dotty great aunt reveal to Martha on her deathbed? Did Jane do something unforgivable? When the cousins are reunited unexpectedly on a tour of the Galapagos, they meet Darwin head on. In the pristine Pacific waters, amid blue footed boobies and red lipped batfish, Jane traces back through her Yankee Cuban Jewish ancestry to try to pinpoint the ‘splitting event,’ the moment when Martha was no longer the Martha she knew. In the process, she ponders the origin of species and the origin of friendship, the instincts of exotic wildlife and of her eccentric shipmates, the evolution of nature and of her life. The result is an antic mating of family saga and natural history. Bearing Schine’s ‘astute ability to sum up modern relationships’ People, as well as her ‘wonderfully inventive comic voice’ New York Times Book Review, The Evolution of Jane sparkles with keen observations on the species known as humans. Above all, it is a warm hearted tribute to that unique adaptation of girlhood, the selection of a very best friend.

She Is Me

At the point in her life when things should be easy, Greta’s house and her hands are full. Greta’s grown daughter, Elizabeth, has just arrived in town with her son and her boyfriend to write a screenplay based on Madame Bovary. Greta’s mother, Lotte, has progressed far beyond being ‘a character’ since her husband died, taking ever increasing amounts of Greta’s time and patience. And, most surprising and unnerving of all, Greta has fallen in love. Not with her sweet and devoted husband. But with someone who appeared unexpectedly through a side door and turned her life upside down. She Is Me deftly portrays the wisdom, pain, and huge reservoirs of love that are intertwined through the lives of women. Knowing each other as only mothers and daughters can, these three weave a sweet hearted comedy out of their mistakes, shortcomings, and attempts at growth. This is the hilarious and heartbreaking book that admirers of The Love Letter and Cathleen Schine’s other acclaimed novels have long been waiting for.

The New Yorkers

An enchanting comedy of manners with dogs! from one of our most treasured writers Cathleen Schine’s brilliantly funny new novel revolves around one city block in Manhattan, a quiet little block near Central Park kept humble by rent control. Living on a street like this in New York with a dog is like living in a tiny village, one that has a rhythm all its own. Dogs bring people together unexpectedly, people who would otherwise never meet. And the dogs act as cupids for the quiet, struggling, sometimes lonely, eccentric people, the old and the young, male and female; the people who live on the block, who are, in their ways, romantics, as all New Yorkers secretly tend to be. Walking her dog, Beatrice, Jody falls under the spell of Everett s bewitching smile. Everett begins to appreciate his postdivorce life only when he falls in love with Howdy, Polly s puppy. Polly lives with her brother, George, and wants him to fall in love. George isn t so much looking for a love life as for life direction, and Howdy leads him right to it. Doris hates the trash on her block, she hates the pee on her SUV s large tires, and, above all, she hates dogs. That is, until she gets one of her own. In The New Yorkers, as in life, canine companions compel their masters to go outside of themselves, to take part in the community they live in, to make friends, and, sometimes, to fall in love. And Schine returns to what she does best: crafting a compulsively readable, elegantly written novel that seduces in the way we were once seduced by The Love Letter, Schine s beloved classic.

The Three Weissmanns of Westport

Jane Austen’s beloved Sense and Sensibility has moved to Westport, Connecticut, in this enchanting modern day homage to the classic novel When Joseph Weissmann divorced his wife, he was seventy eight years old and she was seventy five…
He said the words Irreconcilable differences, and saw real confusion in his wife s eyes. Irreconcilable differences? she said. Of course there are irreconcilable differences. What on earth does that have to do with divorce? Thus begins The Three Weissmanns of Westport, a sparkling contemporary adaptation of Sense and Sensibility from the always winning Cathleen Schine, who has already been crowned a modern day Jewish Jane Austen by People s Leah Rozen. In Schine s story, sisters Miranda, an impulsive but successful literary agent, and Annie, a pragmatic library director, quite unexpectedly find themselves the middle aged products of a broken home. Dumped by her husband of nearly fifty years and then exiled from their elegant New York apartment by his mistress, Betty is forced to move to a small, run down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage. Joining her are Miranda and Annie, who dutifully comes along to keep an eye on her capricious mother and sister. As the sisters mingle with the suburban aristocracy, love starts to blossom for both of them, and they find themselves struggling with the dueling demands of reason and romance.

The Best American Essays 2005

The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected and most popular of its kind. The Best American Essays 2005 includesRoger Angell Andrea Barrett Jonathan Franzen Ian Frazier Edward Hoagland Ted Kooser Jonathan Lethem Danielle Ofri Oliver Sacks Cathleen Schine David Sedaris Robert Stone David Foster Wallace and othersSusan Orlean, guest editor, is the author of My Kind of Place, The Orchid Thief, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, and Saturday Night. A staff writer for The New Yorker since 1982, she has also written for Outside, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Vogue.

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