Alice McDermott

"Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be 'helpmeets' to their ambitious husbands with their own inchoate impulse to 'do good' for the people of Vietnam. Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an...

On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove--to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his badgering, pregnant wife--"that the hours of his life belong to himself alone." In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Savior, an aging nun, a Little Sister of the Sick Poor, appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child....

*Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary with a brand new audiobook recording* *Winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Fiction** Program includes a bonus conversation between Alice McDermott and Matthew Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of the critically-acclaimed novel, We Are Not Ourselves. Alice McDermott's striking audiobook, Charming Billy, is a study of the lies that bind and the weight of familial love, of the way good intentions...

Story of an Irish-Catholic family on Long Island told through the eyes of two sisters and their brother.

The New York Times Bestselling Author of After This and Charming Billy Elizabeth Connelly, editor at a New York vanity press, sells the dream of publication (admittedly, to writers of questionable talent). Stories of true emotional depth rarely cross her desk. But when a young writer named Tupper Daniels walks in, bearing an unfinished novel, Elizabeth is drawn to both the novelist and his story-a lyrical tale about a man in love with more than one...

"On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas tap in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove -- to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his badgering, pregnant wife -- that the hours of his life belonged to himself alone. In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Saviour, an aging nun, a Little Nursing Sister of the Sick Poor, appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn...