J. Courtney Sullivan

"Nora and Theresa Flynn are twenty-one and seventeen when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan--a decision...

From the bestselling author of Maine and Commencement comes a big, sprawling novel about marriage - about those who marry in a white heat of passion, those who marry for partnership and comfort, and those who live together, love each other, and have absolutely no intention of ruining it with a wedding. Weaving them all together, Sullivan gives us a sharply observed, witty, irresistible portrait of the thorny, joyful and complicated union that is marriage....

"The crumbling Victorian had been abandoned long before Jane ever discovered it as a child. It was painted a sweet violet color, and the gingerbread trim was blue and green, but inside was shambles--broken glass, a dollhouse ravaged by mice, bedsheets twisted as though someone had left in a hurry. Still, the house became a hideaway whenever Jane needed to escape her volatile mother. Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to...