About the Author

Anita Shreve is the author of ten other novels including the international bestsellers The Pilot's Wife, a selection of Oprah's Book Club, and The Weight of Water, shortlisted for the Orange Prize.

Reviews

ALL HE EVER WANTED: 'Anita Shreve's assured, subtle writing makes this more than a typical tale of Victorian marital oppression' TELEGRAPH 'It is fluent and purposeful in its portrayal of the despair and claustrophobia seething beneath an ordered surface' THE TIMES 'As Trollope was in his day, Shreve is prolific, polished, unputdownable. Above all, she delivers serious topics with a readable touch' GUARDIAN The Last Time They Met "Exquisitively vivid and evocative" - Mail on Sunday Sea Glass "A fluent and beautifully visualised novel of emotional discovery" - Sunday Times

ALL HE EVER WANTED: 'Anita Shreve's assured, subtle writing makes this more than a typical tale of Victorian marital oppression' TELEGRAPH 'It is fluent and purposeful in its portrayal of the despair and claustrophobia seething beneath an ordered surface' THE TIMES 'As Trollope was in his day, Shreve is prolific, polished, unputdownable. Above all, she delivers serious topics with a readable touch' GUARDIAN The Last Time They Met "Exquisitively vivid and evocative" - Mail on Sunday Sea Glass "A fluent and beautifully visualised novel of emotional discovery" - Sunday Times

Adult/High School-After her family has been shattered by the deaths of her mother and baby sister in a car accident, Nicky Dillon, 12, and her father, Robert, move to a small New Hampshire town. One evening, they discover a newborn abandoned in the snow. When the infant's mother, a college student, comes to the Dillon home, the three become snowbound during a blizzard. As she learns the details of the birth, Nicky befriends and tries to hide the young woman from the detective on the case. Shreve explores unwed motherhood and puberty as well as grief and loneliness. Each character is faced with hard choices; each action has consequences. The characters are real, the events believable, and the outcomes realistic. The book is filled with suspense and tension. Shreve's writing is strong, and the treatment of these sensitive issues is handled realistically.-Sheila Janega, Fairfax County Public Library, Great Falls, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Thirty-year-old Nicky Dillon remembers back to the December of the year she was 11, when she and her father, Robert, took a walk in the woods-and found an abandoned newborn girl. The baby was turned over to the authorities and pronounced all right, but only because the Dillons found her in time. Two years before, Mrs. Dillon and their two-year-old were killed in a car wreck near the family's Westchester County home. In his grief, Robert abandoned his architectural practice and moved with Nicky to an isolated cabin outside the small town of Shepherd, NH, cutting himself off from his previous associates and removing Nicky from her familiar surroundings. The story has some unexpected twists and an ending that is neither joy-filled nor tragic. Narrator Alyson Silverman has a definite Midwestern accent and mispronounces several words that a New Englander would know. For large popular collections where demand warrants.-Nann Blaine Hilyard, Zion-Benton P.L., IL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.