Synopses & Reviews
This gorgeous new novel from the award-winning author of the bestselling
The Weight of Water (nearly 100,000 copies in print!) explores reckless love and its consequences, the sensual education of a young woman, and how unconscious choices can shape an entire life.
In a summer community on the coast of New Hampshire at the turn of the last century, a girl is drawn into a passionate affair with a man nearly three times her age. Fortune's Rocks is the story of Olympia Biddeford privileged, well educated, and mature beyond her years and her affair with John Haskell, who not only is a physician, essayist, and champion of mill workers but also is married with three children. Drawn inexorably together on the night of the summer solstice, the pair set in motion a series of events with far-reaching consequences for all involved.
A meditation on the erotic life of women, an exploration of deeply ingrained class prejudices, and most of all a portrayal of the thoughts and actions of an unforgettable woman, Fortune's Rocks is the most powerful novel yet from Anita Shreve. Following close upon the successes of the bestsellers "The Weight of Water" and The Pilot's Wife, it will further expand Anita Shreve's fast-growing readership.
Review
"[A] slickly made confection for readers who want to laugh and cry at the noble struggle of the human heart and to feel that they too have struggled just a little, maybe trying to get a handle on the oddly cast prose." Alberto Mobilio, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"[A]n ideal book to read while listening...to the waves in a summer's night...Shreve is a skilled storyteller with an uncanny eye for detail...full of heartwrenching suspense..." Washington Post Book World
Review
"No praise is too high for Fortune's Rocks. The book will take hold of you and not let you go until the last word." USA Today
Review
"As sexy as their taboo liaisons are, Shreve is just as compelling in her descriptions of Olympia's solitary suffering in their aftermath, and in the rousing courtroom scenes that pave the way for a morally triumphant happy ending. This is exceptionally fine entertainment." Donna Seaman, Booklist
Synopsis
This magnificent novel transports readers to the world of a prominent Boston family summering on the New Hampshire coast, and to the social orbit of a spirited young woman who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man, with cataclysmic results.
The Fortune Rock's Quartet collects four of Anita Shreve's most beloved novels-
Fortune's Rocks,
The Pilot's Wife,
Sea Glass, and
Body Surfing-for the first time. The novels highlight Shreve's ability to illuminate women's lives across different eras and share a delightful detail: they are all set in the same coastal New England home, one that has inspired Shreve for over a decade. Any house with age to it can tell a million stories about the families who have lived there, and Shreve has been quoted as saying, ''You could base an entire life's work on the people who come in and out of a house.''
Fortune's Rocks depicts a spirited young woman at the turn of the 20th century who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man. In Sea Glass, a young couple's new marriage is rocked to the core by the 1929 stock market crash. The Pilot's Wife brings us to the present day, where Kathryn is unprepared her for the late-night knock that lets her know her husband has been killed in a plane crash. Sydney, the heroine of Body Surfing has already been once divorced and once widowed by the age of 29, and finds the fragile existence she has rebuilt for herself threatened when two brothers vie for her affections.
"There's something addictive about Shreve's tales," according to USA Today, and this quality is on full display in the critically acclaimed novels of The Fortune Rock's Quartet. No one writes more compellingly than Anita Shreve about marriage, family, the depths of our strength and resolve, and the supreme courage that it takes to love.
Synopsis
From the bestselling author of the acclaimed "The Pilot's Wife" and "Sea Glass" comes this magnificent turn-of-the-century novel of illicit passion and its cataclysmic results. When precocious, high-spirited Olympia Biddeford has a passionate affair with John Haskell, a friend of her father's 30 years her senior, both their lives are soon torn apart.
Synopsis
Everywhere hailed for its emotional intensity and unflagging narrative momentum, this magnificent novel transports us to the turn of the twentieth century, to the world of a prominent Boston family summering on the New Hampshire coast, and to the social orbit of a spirited young woman who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man, with cataclysmic results.
Synopsis
Anita Shrere is the author of the acclaimed novels Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, Resistance, The Weight of Water and The Pilot's Wife. She teaches writing at Amherst College and divides her time between Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Synopsis
This beautiful, new novel explores reckless love and its consequences, the sensual education of a young woman, and how choices can shape an entire life.
In a summer community on the coast of New Hampshire at the turn of the last century, a girl is drawn into a passionate affair with a man nearly three times her age. Fortune's Rocks is the story of Olympia Biddeford, privileged, well-educated, and mature beyond her years, and her affair with John Haskell, who not only is a physician, essayist, and champion of mill workers but also a married man with children. Drawn inexorably together on the night of the summer solstice, the pair set in motion a series of events with far-reaching consequences for all involved.
Synopsis
Everywhere hailed as the richest, most compelling work yet by the author of the #1 bestseller
The Pilot's Wife, here is Anita Shreve's magnificent novel,
Fortune's Rocks. We are transported to the turn of the last century, to the world of a prominent Boston family summering on the New Hampshire coast. We are in the social orbit of a spirited young woman who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man -- with cataclysmic results.