Alice McDermott

*Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary with a brand new audiobook recording* *Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction* *Program includes a bonus conversation between Alice McDermott and Matthew Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of the critically-acclaimed novel, We Are Not Ourselves* Alice McDermott's striking audiobook, Charming Billy, is a study of the lies that bind and the weight of familial love, of the way good intentions can be as destructive as the truth they were meant to hide. Billy Lynch's family and friends have gathered to comfort his widow, and to pay their respects to one of the last great romantics. As they trade tales of his famous humor, immense charm, and consuming sorrow, a complex portrait emerges of an enigmatic man, a loyal friend, a beloved husband, an incurable alcoholic.

The quietest life can resonate the longest. A beautiful, bittersweet masterpiece about a remarkable journey of the heartSHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2015LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2014Someone begins on the stoop of a Brooklyn apartment building where Marie is waiting for her father to come home from work. It is the 1920s and in her Irish-American enclave the stories of her neighbours unfold before her short-sighted eyes. As the years pass Marie’s own history plays out against the backdrop of a changing world. This is the story of one life in all its devastating pains and unexpected joys; its bursts of brilliant clarity and moments of profound confusion. Fragments of a curious childhood, of adolescent sexual awakenings, of motherhood and, finally, old age are pieced together in this resonant tale of an unremarkable, unforgettable woman.______________________'A beautiful book' Sunday Telegraph'Masterful' Irish Times'Exquisite' New York Times

The New York Times Bestselling Author of After This and Charming Billy Elizabeth Connelly, editor at a New York vanity press, sells the dream of publication (admittedly, to writers of questionable talent). Stories of true emotional depth rarely cross her desk. But when a young writer named Tupper Daniels walks in, bearing an unfinished novel, Elizabeth is drawn to both the novelist and his story--a lyrical tale about a man in love with more than one woman at once. Tupper's manuscript unlocks memories of her own secretive father, who himself may have been a bigamist. As Elizabeth and Tupper search for the perfect d nouement, their affair, too, approaches a most unexpected and poignant coda. A brilliant debut from one of our most celebrated authors, A Bigamist's Daughter is "a wise, sad, witty novel about men and women, God, hope, love, illusion, and fiction itself" (Newsweek).

Alice McDermott's masterful novel is a portrait of a working-class American family living through the tumultuous middle decades of the twentieth century. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter fruits of the sexual revolution, their older brother, Jacob, finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Clare, the youngest child, seeks to maintain an almost saintly innocence. As their parents, John and Mary, struggle to uphold the family's framework, the four siblings are destined to experience the challenges and liberties of the 1960s. With McDermott's inimitable understanding and grace, "After This" captures the joy, sorrow, anger and love that underpin, and undermine, what it is to be a family.

Elizabeth Connelly sits in a New York office that looks like a real editor's, but isn't quite. Employed at a vanity press, Elizabeth watches the real world - of real struggles, passion, pain and love - spin around her. Until one day, a young writer comes to her with a novel about a man who loves more than one woman at once. And suddenly Elizabeth will be awakened from her young urban professional slumber - by a man's real touch and by a real story in search of an ending. This is a luminous novel of memory, revelation and desire.

On a warm suburban night, the sound of lawn sprinklers is drowned out by the rumble of hot rods. Suddenly, a car careens onto a family's neat front yard, teenage boys spill out brandishing chains and leather, and a young man cries out for the girl he loves. Tonight, fathers will pick up snow shovels and rakes to defend their turf, and children will witness a battle fuelled by fierce, true love. This is the night they will talk about and remember as the moment things changed for ever.

On the cusp of fifteen, pretty Theresa is the town's most sought-after babysitter - cheerful, beloved, adored by children and animals, but also a solitary soul with an already complex understanding of human nature. She is Titania among her fairies, the one person to call on for help with a child in extreme distress. Theresa does not doubt her power over the fathers of her adoring charges either, whose potential lechery Theresa toys with like a kitten with yarn. Yet during this unforgettable summer, it is her cousin Daisy, a frail little creature with glittery shoes and worrying bruises that don't heal, in whom Theresa invests her greatest love. Infused with suppressed passion, disappointment, and enduring hope, Alice McDermott's wonderful new novel reveals a world seen afresh through the eyes of an utterly seductive girl.

A teenage girl, raised on the east end of Long Island among the country estates of the rich, reflects on her understanding of the complexities and contradictions of human nature during a seemingly idyllic summer spent with her eight-year-old cousin Daisy. By the author of the National Book Award-winning Charming Billy. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.

Twice a week, Lucy Dailey leaves suburbia with her three children in tow, returning to the Brooklyn home where she grew up, and where her stepmother and unmarried sisters still live. Aunt Veronica, with her wounded face and dreams of beauty, drowns her sorrows in drink. Aunt Agnes, an acerbic student of elegance, sips only from the finest crystal as she sees Aunt May, the ex-nun, blossom with a late and unexpected love. And all the while, the children watch, absorbing the legacy of their haunted family. At once a moving evocation of life's inexplicable calamities and a magical celebration of childhood and familial love, AT WEDDINGS AND WAKES is the story of three generations of an Irish-American family through the eyes of its youngest members. With eloquence and grace, master storyteller Alice McDermott transforms everyday experience into the heroic and universal.

The late Billy Lynch's family and friends gather at a small bar and grill in the Bronx to remember better times. His widow, Maeve, is there and everyone admires the way she is holding up, just as they always admired the way she cared for Billy after the alcohol had ruined him. But one cannot think of Billy without saying at some point, 'There was that girl'. On Long Island one summer years ago, Billy fell in love with a beautiful Irish girl working for a wealthy Park Avenue family. Billy wanted to marry Eva, but then she went back to Ireland. And then Billy's cousin Dennis had to break the terrible news: Eva had died of pneumonia. Billy never got over it. Anybody who knew him would tell you so. Billy began courting Maeve not long after, but for the rest of their lives, he, she and Dennis shared a hidden, twisted grief.