The vibrant and tender story of a young woman coming to terms with tragedy and finding the courage to love again From the moment they meet, Elizabeth "Olly" Marcus and Sam Bax are coconspirators. They dump Olly's boyfriend in the library, speed off on the back of Sam's motorcycle, and seal their reckless bargain with a kiss in an apple orchard. A year later, they are married. Five years after that, Olly is a widow, her last glimpse of Sam a bright white dot on the horizon as he sailed into a storm off the coast of Maine. At the age of twenty-seven, Olly must begin again. She has lost an accomplice, but Sam's parents have lost a son, and his brother, Patrick, has lost his best friend and the one person who truly understood him. The bonds of family are both a comfort and a burden to Olly as she tries to find a way to live with her grief and accept her role in her daredevil husband's fate. Eventually she rediscovers her own sense of adventure, and with a...

The enchanting and insightful story of a woman trying to reconcile her rock-and-roll past with her respectable present When Geraldine Colshares drops out of graduate school to become the only white backup singer in an R&B band, nobody thinks it is a good idea. Not her parents, who are sure she is on drugs. Not her best friend, who sees going on tour as a way of staving off real life. Not even Doo-Wah Banks, her Juilliard-trained bandmate and crush, who suggests she find a nice white husband. But to be a Shakette—as in Vernon and Ruby Shakely and the Shakettes—has been the burning desire of Geraldine's heart since puberty, and when she steps on stage in her chartreuse dress and luminescent shoes, she knows she is exactly where she belongs. All good things must come to an end, however, and after two years on the road Geraldine quits the band and settles down to the kind of conventional routine—marriage, children, dinner parties—she...

In A Big Storm Knocked It Over, acclaimed author Laurie Colwin explores marriage, friendship, motherhood, and careers as experienced by a cast of endearing, idiosyncratic Manhattanites. At once a hilarious social commentary and an insightful, sophisticated modern romance, A Big Storm Knocked It Over will stand as a living tribute to one of contemporary fiction's most original voices.

A witty, wise, and endearing portrait of two couples as they navigate the unsteady terrain of modern love Guido Morris and Vincent Cardworthy are third cousins and best friends. In college they dreamed of writing poetry (Guido) and winning the Nobel Prize in Physics (Vincent). Now in their late twenties, they are together again in Cambridge and on the verge of settling down to more prosaic pursuits. Vincent is headed to New York City to become the Board of City Planning's expert on garbage, while Guido is preparing to take over the management of his family's foundation. What they really want to know, however, is who their wives will be. Guido gets the first inkling of his romantic future when he spies a girl with the blackest, sleekest hair he has ever seen sitting on a bench at the Fogg Museum. When he tries to flirt with her, Holly Sturgis makes a cutting remark and leaves. For Guido, it is love at first sight. Vincent discovers Misty Berkowitz one...

Reprint. Originally published: New York : Knopf, 1988

The poignant and perceptive tale of an affair, from intoxicating first kiss to bittersweet good-bye Josephine "Billy" Delielle and Francis Clemens are sleeping together. Both are economists and both are married to other people, but the similarities end there. He is fastidious; she is a slob. He delights in good food and fine wine; her refrigerator is always empty. He is old and sentimental; she is young and tough minded. This is not his first extramarital dalliance; she never imagined it was possible to love anyone but her husband. The desire that Billy and Francis feel for each other is as inexplicable as it is undeniable, and the moments they steal together are electrifying, tense, and reassuring all at once. Told from the alternating perspectives of two adulterous lovers, Another Marvelous Thing is an exquisitely crafted story collection that tackles the thorniest of subjects with honesty, grace, and humor. This ebook features an...

The debut story collection from one of America's most beloved authors Laurie Colwin explores the mysteries of life and love with her signature blend of empathy, wisdom, and wit in these fourteen exquisite tales. In "Animal Behavior," an ornithologist and a doctoral student find their own mating habits to be just as inscrutable as those of their avian subjects. In "The Elite Viewer," when his wife travels to England to attend a seminar, Benno Moran searches for exotic ways to occupy his time. He discovers television, junk food, and Greenie Frenzel, a young woman with Technicolor hair and an appetite for cherry soda and mentholated cigarettes. "Children, Dogs, and Desperate Men" is the story of Elizabeth Bayard, a sensible music critic whose flirtation with a married cartographer is the latest in a series of romantic missteps as irrational as they are irresistible. The heroes and heroines of Passion and Affect are clever, naive, brave, delicate, and...

Thirteen tales of happiness, heartbreak, and desire from the acclaimed author of Home Cooking and Happy All the Time In the title story of this elegant and insightful collection, a book illustrator meets the man of her dreams and struggles to say good-bye to her old self: the perfect houseguest who delighted in the dinner parties of her married friends and always went home alone. "A Mythological Subject" is the tale of an adulterous affair that arrives unexpected and unwanted, like a natural disaster, but is no mistake. In "The Smile Beneath the Smile," Rachel Manheim, an ardent and intelligent young woman, must finally decide what to do about her unavailable lover. "A Girl Skating" is a delicate and haunting portrait of the unbridgeable divide between life and art, poetry and nature. The warmth, humor, and emotional honesty that characterize Laurie Colwin's writing are on full display in The Lone Pilgrim. Each of these sublime stories...