As Miss Lucy Harrington, daughter of the village rector, and Major Sir Robert Kurland plan their nuptials, the major is beginning to wonder if he'll ever hear wedding bells. He's seen complex military campaigns that involved less strategy, and he's finding Lucy's meddling family maddening. When a body of Ezekiel Thurrock, the church verger, is discovered crushed by a gargoyle that has fallen from the bell tower, the wedding is delayed. but the evidence...

Three generations of women converge on the family beach house in this wickedly funny, emotionally resonant story of love and dysfunction.

"From the National Book Award longlisted author of The Portable Veblen. Penny Rush has problems. Her marriage is over; she's quit her job. Her mother and stepfather went missing in the Australian outback five years ago; her mentally unbalanced father provokes her; her grandmother Dr. Pincer keeps experiments in the refrigerator and something worse in the woodshed. But Penny is a virtuoso at what's possible when all else fails"--

If the story doesnt end with marriage or a child, what then? Glynnis refused to be cast into either of those roles and yet the question remained: What now? There was no good blueprint for how to be a woman alone in the world. She concluded it was time to create one. Over the course of her fortieth year, which this memoir chronicles, Glynnis embarks on a revealing journey of self-discovery that continually contradicts everything shed been led to...

An expectant young woman turned away by her family at Christmas is taken in by the Shakers at Harmony Hill.