The "New York Times" bestseller called "quietly gripping" by "USA Today" demonstrates how impulses can fracture even the most stable family. Despite her loving family and beautiful home, Jo Becker is restless. Then an old roommate reappears, bringing back Jo's memories of her early 20s. Jo's obsession with that period in her life--and the crime that ended it--draws her back to a horrible secret.
This "New York Times" Notable Book by the bestselling author of "While I Was Gone" is a haunting novel that exposes the nerves that lie hidden in marriages, families, and the lives of two women.
A Masterful, Engrossing Novel About The Life Of A Large Family That Is Deeply Bounded By The Stranger In Their Midst -- An Autistic Child The whole world could not have broken the spirit and strength of the Eberhardt family of 1948. Lainey is a wonderful if slightly eccentric mother. David is a good father, sometimes sarcastic, always cool-tempered. Two wonderful children round out the perfect picture. Then the next child arrives -- and life is never the same again. Over the next forty years, the Eberhardt family struggles to survive a flood tide of upheaval and heartbreak, love and betrayal, passion and pain...hoping they can someday heal their hearts.
Meri is newly married, pregnant, and standing on the cusp of her life as a wife and mother, recognizing with some terror the gap between reality and expectation. Delia—wife of the two-term liberal senator Tom Naughton—is Meri's new neighbor in the adjacent New England town house. Tom's chronic infidelity has been an open secret in Washington circles, but despite the complexity of their relationship, the bond between them remains strong. Soon Delia and Meri find themselves leading strangely parallel lives, as they both reckon with the contours and mysteries of marriage: one refined and abraded by years of complicated intimacy, the other barely begun. With precision and a rich vitality, Sue Miller—beloved and bestselling author of While I Was Gone—brings us a highly charged, superlative novel about marriage and forgiveness.
Meet Billy Gertz: a fiercely independent playwright, whose newest drama imagines the story of a man waiting to hear if his estranged wife has survived a cataclysmic event. As her life touches three other unforgettable characters, Billy’s play—the emotion behind its genesis and its powerful performance—forms the thread that binds them all together. A moving love story and a tale of connection and loss, The Lake Shore Limited is Sue Miller at her dazzling best.
In the fall of 1988, Sue Miller found herself caring for her father as he slipped into the grasp of Alzheimer's disease. She was, she claims, perhaps the least constitutionally suited of all her siblings to be in the role in which she suddenly found herself, and in The Story of My Father she grapples with the haunting memories of those final months and the larger narrative of her father's life. With compassion, self-scrutiny, and an urgency born of her own yearning to rescue her father's memory from the disorder and oblivion that marked his dying and death, Sue Miller takes us on an intensely personal journey that becomes, by virtue of her enormous gifts of observation, perception, and literary precision, a universal story of fathers and daughters. James Nichols was a fourth-generation minister, a retired professor from Princeton Theological Seminary. Sue Miller brings her father brilliantly to life in these pages-his religious faith, his endless patience with his children, his gaiety and willingness to delight in the ridiculous, his singular gifts as a listener, and the rituals of church life that stayed with him through his final days. She recalls the bitter irony of watching him, a church historian, wrestle with a disease that inexorably lays waste to notions of time, history, and meaning. She recounts her struggle with doctors, her deep ambivalence about many of her own choices, and the difficulty of finding, continually, the humane and moral response to a disease whose special cruelty it is to dissolve particularities and to diminish, in so many ways, the humanity of those it strikes. She reflects, unforgettably, on the variable nature of memory, the paradox of trying to weave a truthful narrative from the threads of a dissolving life. And she offers stunning insight into her own life as both a daughter and a writer, two roles that swell together here in a poignant meditation on the consolations of storytelling. With the care, restraint, and consummate skill that define her beloved and best-selling fiction, Sue Miller now gives us a rigorous, compassionate inventory of two lives, in a memoir destined to offer comfort to all sons and daughters struggling-as we all eventually must-to make peace with their fathers and with themselves.
Headed straight for bestseller lists everywhere, Miller's graceful and passionate writing explores the many dimensions of love as she reunites three childhood friends who, having grown up together, now learn that complicated adult lives can offer opportunities to find great love--and to suffer great loss.
For nearly two decades, since the publication of her iconic first novel, The Good Mother, Sue Miller has distinguished herself as one of our most elegant and widely celebrated chroniclers of family life, with a singular gift for laying bare the interior lives of her characters. In each of her novels, Miller has written with exquisite precision about the experience of grace in daily life–the sudden, epiphanic recognition of the extraordinary amid the ordinary–as well as the sharp and unexpected motions of the human heart away from it, toward an unruly netherworld of upheaval and desire. But never before have Miller’s powers been keener or more transfixing than they are in Lost in the Forest, a novel set in the vineyards of Northern California that tells the story of a young girl who, in the wake of a tragic accident, seeks solace in a damaging love affair with a much older man. Eva, a divorced and happily remarried mother of three, runs a small bookstore in a town north of San Francisco. When her second husband, John, is killed in a car accident, her family’s fragile peace is once again overtaken by loss. Emily, the eldest, must grapple with newfound independence and responsibility. Theo, the youngest, can only begin to fathom his father’s death. But for Daisy, the middle child, John’s absence opens up a world of bewilderment, exposing her at the onset of adolescence to the chaos and instability that hover just beyond the safety of parental love. In her sorrow, Daisy embarks on a harrowing sexual odyssey, a journey that will cast her even farther out onto the harsh promontory of adulthood and lost hope. With astonishing sensuality and immediacy, Lost in the Forest moves through the most intimate realms of domestic life, from grief and sex to adolescence and marriage. It is a stunning, kaleidoscopic evocation of a family in crisis, written with delicacy and masterful care. For her lifelong fans and those just discovering Sue Miller for the first time, here is a rich and gorgeously layered tale of a family breaking apart and coming back together again: Sue Miller at her inimitable best.
Fleeing the end of an affair, and troubled by the feeling that she belongs nowhere after working in East Africa for fifteen years, Frankie Rowley comes home to the small New Hampshire town of Pomeroy and the farmhouse where her family has always summered. On her first night back, a house up the road burns to the ground. Is it an accident? Over the weeks that follow, as Frankie comes to recognise her father's slow failing and her mother's desperation, and she tentatively gets to know the new owner of the local newspaper, another house burns, and then another. These frightening events open the deep social fault lines in the town and raise questions about how and where one ought to live, and what it really means to lead a fulfilling life.
NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020! NPR BEST BOOK OF 2020 PEOPLE MAGAZINE TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF 2020 GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF 2020 “A sensual and perceptive novel. . . . With humor and humanity, Miller resists the simple scorned-wife story and instead crafts a revelatory tale of the complexities—and the absurdities—of love, infidelity, and grief.” —O, the Oprah Magazine A brilliantly insightful novel, engrossing and haunting, about marriage, love, family, happiness and sorrow, from New York Times bestselling author Sue Miller. Graham and Annie have been married for nearly thirty years. Their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances. By all appearances, they are a golden couple. Graham is a bookseller, a big, gregarious man with large appetites—curious, eager to please, a lover of life, and the convivial host of frequent, lively parties at his and Annie’s comfortable house in Cambridge. Annie, more reserved and introspective, is a photographer. She is about to have her first gallery show after a six-year lull and is worried that the best years of her career may be behind her. They have two adult children; Lucas, Graham’s son with his first wife, Frieda, works in New York. Annie and Graham’s daughter, Sarah, lives in San Francisco. Though Frieda is an integral part of this far-flung, loving family, Annie feels confident in the knowledge that she is Graham’s last and greatest love. When Graham suddenly dies—this man whose enormous presence has seemed to dominate their lives together—Annie is lost. What is the point of going on, she wonders, without him? Then, while she is still mourning Graham intensely, she discovers a ruinous secret, one that will spiral her into darkness and force her to question whether she ever truly knew the man who loved her.
In the spring of 1986, Sue Miller found herself more and more deeply involved in the care of her father as he slipped into the grasp of Alzheimer's disease. This is an account of her father's final days and her own struggle to be with him while confronting her own terror of abandonment.
A moving story of secrets, lies and murder' The Times 'Beautiful and frightening' New York Times Book Review 'A dark page-turner' Independent 'An astonishing mix of the warm, complex and frightening' Mail on Sunday Perhaps it's best to live with the possibility that around any corner, at any time, may come the person who reminds you of your own capacity to surprise yourself, to put at risk everything that's dear to you... Thirty years ago Jo Becker's bohemian life ended when she found her best friend brutally murdered. Now Jo has everything: a career she loves, a devoted husband, three grown daughters and a beautiful home. But when an old friend settles in her small town, the fabric of Jo's life begins to unravel, as she enters a relationship that returns her to the darkest moments of her past, and puts everything she loves in danger ... What readers are saying about While I was Gone: 'Exceptional ... the plot is gripping, her characters achingly real, her description of emotion spot on and razor-sharp' 'So true to life' 'Three words describe this book for me - Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant!' 'Eloquently written with insight and believability' 'I was truly blown away by Miller's talent' 'The characters are absolutely unforgettable' 'An outstanding book and one that I won't soon forget' 'I absolutely loved this book' 'Completely engrossing and mesmerizing
A tour de force by any standard." —Newsweek "Miller writes with wisdom, compassion, and an almost palpable sense of reality about the ambiguous and difficult choices that . . . at one time or another, life demands of us." —Atlanta Journal-Constitution A convergence of family and friends stirs memories of the past in New York Times bestselling author Sue Miller's novel about the beautiful, raging, and tragic yearning for romantic love. After years of lives lived apart, Lottie Gardner, her brother, Cameron, and their old friend Elizabeth reunite in their hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lottie has arrived to settle the estate of her elderly mother in decline. It's also a chance to slip away from a passionless marriage in jeopardy. What she longs for is the kind of heedless romance she sees in her brother's rekindled fling with his childhood sweetheart. But Elizabeth is in the throes of a marital crisis of her own. And when blind desire culminates in a senseless tragedy, Lottie, Cameron, and Elizabeth must confront the choices they've made for love. Gripping, emotional, and unexpected, For Love explores the inevitable reconciliation of the life you dream of when young and hopeful with the reality of the one you must abide.
Miller writes with tremendous subtlety and perception' Daily Mail 'Masterful storytelling' Good Housekeeping 'A beautiful, wistful meditation on the concept of home' Elle Catherine Hubbard is at a crossroads in her life. Twice divorced, she has three children who are now grown up and scattered. Now, news comes that she has inherited her grandmother Georgia's home in Vermont. There, Catherine will find not only the ghosts of her own past but those of Georgia as well, whose diaries reveal a deep secret and a tragic misunderstanding ... What readers are saying about The World Below: 'Heartwarming and inspiring' 'An exceptionally good book' 'This book was a delight to read' 'Perfect storytelling!' 'A lovely cadence moving among generations of women' 'I think Sue Miller is my new favourite author' 'Her focus on family relationships is so compelling to me' 'Hugely enjoyable from start to finish ... beautiful prose, fully-rounded characters, wonderfully acute observations of human behaviour
Brilliant' THE TIMES 'A finely observed study of identity and belonging' MAIL ON SUNDAY Fleeing the end of an affair, and troubled by the feeling that she belongs nowhere after working in East Africa for fifteen years, Frankie Rowley comes home to the small New Hampshire town of Pomeroy and the farmhouse where her family has always summered. On her first night back, a house up the road burns to the ground. Is it an accident, or something more deliberate? During the following weeks, as Frankie comes to recognise her father's slow failing and her mother's desperation, and tentatively gets to know the new owner of the local newspaper, another house burns - and then another. These frightening events crack open the deep social fault lines in the town, raising questions about how and where one ought to live, and what it really means to lead a fulfilling life. What readers are saying about The Arsonist: 'A stonking good read' 'A treat' 'I love Sue Miller and would recommend any of her books; she is a tremendous writer' 'I could not put it down' 'A lovely narrative that will never leave me. Five stars' 'I loved every page
Wonderful - rich, intelligent and moving' Los Angeles Times 'Miller depicts her characters with grace an elegance' New York Times Book Review 'Intelligent, moving ... overflowing with ideas, insights, and fine-tuned emotions' Kirkus Reviews At the age of seventy-two, Lily became a national celebrity. Her memoir about the breakup of her marriage garnered critical acclaim and won the hearts of millions. But her new-found fame was not well received by her son Alan and daughter Clary, both profoundly disturbed by Lily's intimate revelations about her married life. Ten years on, their resentment is still raw, and when Lily, now ill and frail, comes to live with Alan, the bitter legacy of their very different memories threatens to upset the precarious balance of their lives ... What readers are saying about The Distinguished Guest: 'Complex and challenging, tender and sweet' 'Immensely readable, sensitive, yet honest' 'Those who adore nuanced dialogue and story development will find this a subtle treat' 'Outstanding!' 'Sue Miller is a brilliant writer' 'Amazing. Just amazing' 'A beautifully drawn study of a family' 'Sue Miller's characters always snap to life, walk off her pages, and remain with you long after the last page
Improvising Sabor: Cuban Dance Music in New York begins in 1960s New York and examines in rich detail the playing styles and international influence of important figures in US Latin music. Such innovators as José Fajardo, Johnny Pacheco, George Castro, and Eddy Zervigón dazzled the Palladium ballroom and other Latin music venues in those crucible years. Author Sue Miller focuses on the Cuban flute style in light of its transformations in the US after the 1959 revolution and within the vibrant context of 1960s New York. While much about Latin jazz and salsa has been written, this book focuses on the relatively unexplored New York charangas that were performing during the chachachá and pachanga craze of the early sixties. Indeed, many accounts cut straight from the 1950s and the mambo to the bugalú’s development in the late 1960s with little mention of the chachachá and pachanga’s popularity in the mid-twentieth century. Improvising Sabor addresses not only this lost and ignored history, but contends with issues of race, class, and identity while evaluating differences in style between players from prerevolution Cuban charangas and those of 1960s New York. Through comprehensive explorations and transcriptions of numerous musical examples as well as interviews with and commentary from Latin musicians, Improvising Sabor highlights a specific sabor that is rooted in both Cuban dance music forms and the rich performance culture of Latin New York. The distinctive styles generated by these musicians sparked compelling points of departure and influence.
Wonderful - rich, intelligent and moving' Los Angeles Times 'Utterly gripping' Marie Claire One minute John is the cornerstone of Eva's world; a rock to his two teenage stepdaughters and his own son Theo. The next he is tossed through the air in a traffic accident, and snapped like a twig. His sudden death changes everything. Eva struggles with the terror and desolation of loneliness, and finds herself drawn back to her untrustworthy ex-husband; Emily, the eldest daughter, grapples with her new-found independence and responsibility. Little Theo can only begin to fathom the permanence of his father's death. But for Daisy, John's absence opens up a whole world of confusion just at the onset of adolescence and blossoming sexuality. And in steps a man only too willing to take advantage ... What readers are saying about Lost in the Forest: 'Another can't-put-it-down novel by Sue Miller' 'Dark, disturbing and decadent!!!' 'Brilliant ... readable and delightful' 'A wonderful book, by an author who is at the peak of her talent' 'Time after time, Sue Miller has proven herself a master storyteller' 'Haunting and beautifully written' 'Breathtaking in its accuracy
Tasteful, elegant, sensuous' Boston Globe 'Incredible ... Perfect book-club material' Easy Living 'Addictive' Eve 'Complex, rich, haunting' Woman & Home Maybe some people just like to keep things private. Secret, I guess you'd say. Love came late to Meri, but in a rush: she met Nathan at thirty-six, he moved in a month later, and they married a month after that. Now they are moving to New England and a house of their own - a new life that Meri is not sure she even wants. She loves her husband, but feels there may be trouble ahead. Nathan, however, is boyishly excited that their next-door neighbour is the eminent Senator Tom Naughton, a political hero of his, now in his seventies. The Senator is nowhere to be seen, but Meri strikes up an unexpected friendship with his wife, the elegant Delia, sensing that she has much to learn from her - about marriage, love and motherhood. But soon she comes close to a terrible breach of trust that could ruin everything. Even the most public marriages have their secrets... What readers say about The Senator's Wife: 'I love this book ... captivating' 'Subtle, rich and oh so close to home' 'I couldn't put this book down' 'Very gracious, warm and funny' 'Excellent and perceptive storytelling of the highest order' 'These characters are alive, they are real' 'This is an exquisite book, with many twists and turns and moments of pure beauty and poignancy.' 'This book is still haunting me, several weeks later ... I didn't want it to end
Absolutely flawless ... Extraordinary' Anne Tyler 'The most honest twentieth-century love story we've had in a while' New York Times Book Review 'Deep, resonant, splendid' Kirkus Review Lottie's second marriage, barely begun, is in trouble. Seeking respite, she is relieved to have escaped to her mother's house for the summer. Also at home is Cameron, Lottie's brother, who has been in love with their neighbour Elizabeth since high school. Elizabeth is married with three children but now, finally, Elizabeth and Cameron embark on a passionate affair. But as Lottie, Cameron and Elizabeth are reunited, a senseless tragedy befalls them ... What readers are saying about For Love: 'Her characters feel so real to me, their lives so eminently plausible' 'She's an extraordinary storyteller' 'An intelligent, thoughtful and rich examination of ways of loving' 'Insightful and subtle' 'As always Sue Miller excels' 'Her character development is outstanding' 'Superb' 'What a brilliant book. Sue Miller is quickly becoming one of my favourite writers
Richard Egües and José Fajardo are universally regarded as the leading exponents of charanga flute playing, an improvisatory style that crystallized in 1950s Cuba with the rise of the mambo and the chachachá. Despite the commercial success of their recordings with Orquesta Aragón and Fajardo y sus Estrellas and their influence not only on Cuban flute players but also on other Latin dance musicians, no in-depth analytical study of their flute solos exists. In Cuban Flute Style: Interpretation and Improvisation, Sue Miller—music historian, charanga flute player, and former student of Richard Egües—examines the early-twentieth-century decorative style of flute playing in the Cuban danzón and its links with the later soloistic style of the 1950s as exemplified by Fajardo and Egües. Transcriptions and analyses of recorded performances demonstrate the characteristic elements of the style as well as the styles of individual players. A combination of musicological analysis and ethnomusicological fieldwork reveals the polyrhythmic and melodic aspects of the Cuban flute style, with commentary from flutists Richard Egües, Joaquín Oliveros, Polo Tamayo, Eddy Zervigón, and other renowned players. Miller also covers techniques for flutists seeking to learn the style—including altissimo fingerings for the Boehm flute and fingerings for the five-key charanga flute—as well as guidance on articulation, phrasing, repertoire, practicing improvisation, and working with recordings. Cuban Flute Style will appeal to those working in the fields of Cuban music, improvisation, music analysis, ethnomusicology, performance and performance practice, popular music, and cultural theory.
An excellent contribution to the literature, the text is clear and dynamic. Extremely useful for new students, those wanting to work in Children's Services and those returning to study." -Margy Whalley Pen Green Centre, Corby Are you looking for a handy guide to childhood and early childhood studies? Concentrating on the skills that students need to master in order to do well on childhood and early childhood courses, this book is a clear and practical guide to all the key areas. Included is advice on: Getting to grips with key course themes Understanding different theoretical views of the child Analysing various approaches to working with children and young people Making the transition from personal experience of children to studying childhood at university Producing successful assignments Making the most of your lectures Drawing on a range of university resources including people, services and research visits Examples from students' work are featured, and students talk about thier own experiences. There is plenty of help and practical advice - no matter what your academic experience, this book will offer you a helping hand through your course. Kay Sambell has a Chair in Learning and Teaching and is Course Leader for the Childhood Studies Degree at Northumbria University. Sue Miller is the Lead Officer and a senior strategic Children's Centre manager within Early Education and Childcare Services for Newcastle. Mel Gibson teaches on a range of Childhood Studies courses at different institutions.
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