"As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it's just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea. Rich with empathy and emotion, Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation,...

[S]]hows how a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all--the one between mother and daughter. Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy's childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed...

Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret, one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us....

Book Review (Library Journal) In a small Maine town during the 1950s, a devoted minister is puzzled by the complications of life. He yearns to know God but remains oblivious to the needs of his family. Meanwhile, various members of his parish choose to deal with the monotony of days in their own ways: through gossip, fear, or sexual addictions. Strout (Amy and Isabelle) provides abrupt contrasts between the suffocating quality of Rev. Tyler Caskey's...

Presents twenty of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.

The four-part drama that tells the story of a seemingly placid New England town that is actually wrought with illicit affairs, crime and tragedy, all told through the lens of Olive, whose wicked wit and harsh demeanor mask a warm but troubled heart and staunch moral center. The story spans 25 years and focuses on Olive's relationships with her husband, Henry, the good-hearted and kindly town pharmacist; their son, Christopher, who resents his mother's...