Beth Gutcheon

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Louisiana

A Novel

In a small town called Dundee on the coast of Maine, an old woman named Hannah Gray begins her story: "Somebody said 'true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.' I've seen both and I don't know how to tell you which is worse." Hannah has decided, finally, to leave a record of the passionate and anguished long-ago summer in Dundee when she met Conary Crocker, the town bad boy and love of her life. This spare, piercing, and unforgettable novel bridges two centuries and two intense love stories as Hannah and Conary's fate is interwoven with the tale of a marriage that took place in Dundee a hundred years earlier.

More Than You Know  (71)

5cc203d0-5518-466e-9b97-7612d6cd71a4-1

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Michigan

"She has absolutely perfect pitch when it comes to capturing the voices of these remarkable women. This seems to me to be the quintessential American woman's tale. I loved it." -- Anne Rivers Siddons Five Fortunes, the funny and hope-filled new novel from acclaimed author Beth Gutcheon, is about a year in the life of five remarkable women, each of whom saves her own life by trying to do the right thing for somebody else. Rae Strouse is a lively octogenarian with an ailing husband. Carter Bond is a private investigator trying to give up smoking. Amy and Jill Burrows are a mother and teenage daughter traveling together, bearing a secret weight of baggage between them. Laura Lopez, reeling from the death of her politician husband, needs a new set of dreams. They are about to meet at a fabled health spa called The Cloisters, known affectionately to its devotees as Fat Chance. Gutcheon weaves a large-hearted tale of five vivid and memorable women who know where they've been but have no idea where they're going. In the luxury boot-camp atmosphere of The Cloisters, where doctors, lawyers, spoiled housewives, movie stars and captains of industry are stripped of makeup and jewelry and the other social markers that keep people from really seeing each other, surprising friendships can be made, with surprising consequences. In this year of their lives, these five women learn that it is both true and untrue that we make our own luck. Though the worlds they inhabit are as real as tomorrow's newspaper stories, constantly reminding them how closely linked are rich and poor, fortune and misfortune, there is also a magic to the tale that causes it to resonate long after the book is finished. Beth Gutcheon is the critically acclaimed author of four novels, The New Girls, Still Missing, Domestic Pleasures and Saying Grace. She is the writer of several film scripts, including the Academy Award nominee The Children of Theatre Street. She lives in New York City.

Five Fortunes

9127c68f-0f9f-4b99-b65c-2ce4b3cf8362-1

Address label on coverpage, binding is tight but appears to be glued off center, see photos 

Alabama

New York

The New York Times bestselling author of More Than You Know, Leeway Cottage, and Death at Breakfast delivers the second installment in her clever romp of a mystery series combining social comedy and dark-hearted murder—a novel set at a girls’ boarding school in a picturesque Hudson River town with more than its share of secrets. Since retiring as head of a famous New York City private school, Maggie Detweiler is busier than ever. Chairing a team to evaluate the faltering Rye Manor School for girls, she will determine whether, in spite of its fabled past, the school has a future at all. With so much on the line for so many, tensions on campus are at an excruciating pitch, and Maggie expects to be as welcome as a case of Ebola virus. At a reception for the faculty and trustees to "welcome" Maggie’s team, no one seems more keen for all to go well than Florence Meagher, a star teacher who is loved and respected in spite of her affliction—that she can never stop talking. Florence is one of those dedicated teachers for whom the school is her life, and yet the next morning, when Maggie arrives to observe her teaching, Florence is missing. Florence’s husband, Ray, an auxiliary policeman in the village, seems more annoyed than alarmed at her disappearance. But Florence’s sister is distraught. There have been tensions in the marriage, and at their last visit, Florence had warned, "If anything happens to me, don’t assume it’s an accident." Two days later, Florence’s body is found in the campus swimming pool. Maggie is asked to stay on to coach the very young and inexperienced head of Rye Manor through the crisis. Maggie obviously knows schools, but she also knows something about investigating murder, having solved a mysterious death in Maine the previous year when the police went after the wrong suspect. She is soon joined by her madcap socialite friend Hope, who is jonesing for an excuse to ditch her book club anyway, before she has to actually read Silas Marner. What on earth is going on in this idyllic town? Is this a run-of-the-mill marital murder? Or does it have something to do with the school board treasurer’s real estate schemes? And what is up with the vicious cyber-bullying that’s unsettled everyone, or with the disturbed teenaged boy whom Florence had made a pet of? And is it possible that someone killed Florence just so she’d finally shut up?

The Affliction

437606c2-dbcb-4560-b026-323767da3bcb-1

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

North Carolina

In a tale that spans a long-term twentieth-century marriage, wealthy Sydney Brant marries Danish pianist Laurus Moss on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Denmark and finds their marriage challenged by disparate views of the world, Laurus's decision to join the Danish Resistance, and Sydney's struggles to raise their child alone. By the author of More Than You Know. 75,000 first printing.

Leeway Cottage

f44e0842-0766-4e21-8257-3526e5beef46-1

Florida

From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Still Missing, More Than You Know, and Gossip comes the first entry in a stylish and witty mystery series featuring a pair of unlikely investigators—a shrewd novel of manners with a dark heart of murder at its center, set in small-town New England. Indulging their pleasure in travel and new experiences, recently retired private school head Maggie Detweiler and her old friend, socialite Hope Babbin, are heading to Maine. The trip—to attend a weeklong master cooking class at the picturesque Victorian-era Oquossoc Mountain Inn—is an experiment to test their compatibility for future expeditions. Hope and Maggie have barely finished their first aperitifs when the inn’s tranquility is shattered by the arrival of Alexander and Lisa Antippas and Lisa’s actress sister, Glory. Imperious and rude, these Hollywood one-percenters quickly turn the inn upside-down with their demanding behavior, igniting a flurry of speculation and gossip among staff and guests alike. But the disruption soon turns deadly. After a suspicious late-night fire is brought under control, Alex’s charred body is found in the ashes. Enter the town’s deputy sheriff, Buster Babbin, Hope’s long-estranged son and Maggie’s former student. A man who’s finally found his footing in life, Buster needs a win. But he’s quickly pushed aside by the “big boys,” senior law enforcement and high-powered state’s attorneys who swoop in to make a quick arrest. Maggie knows that Buster has his deficits and his strengths. She also knows that justice does not always prevail—and that the difference between conviction and exoneration too often depends on lazy police work and the ambitions of prosecutors. She knows too, after a lifetime of observing human nature, that you have a great advantage in doing the right thing if you don’t care who gets the credit or whom you annoy. Feeling that justice could use a helping hand--as could the deputy sheriff—Maggie and Hope decide that two women of experience equipped with healthy curiosity, plenty of common sense, and a cheerfully cynical sense of humor have a useful role to play in uncovering the truth.

Death at Breakfast

a8992dfb-3bb6-481c-83c8-f3645b3af6ab-1

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Wisconsin

Determined to keep their inheritance from dividing them, close siblings Eleanor, Monica, and Jimmy Moss struggle with differences of opinion about how to share and maintain their late parents' summer house.

Good-Bye and Amen

f5616d13-6001-44a4-b827-67c08b4b45e2-1

Good-Bye and Amen 14C

Pennsylvania

More Than You Know

Rue Shaw has everything--a much loved child, a solid marriage, and a job she loves. Saying Grace takes place in Rue's mid-life, when her daughter is leaving home, her parents are failing, her husband is restless and the school she has built is being buffeted by changes in society that affect us all. Funny, rich in detail and finally stunning, this novel presents a portrait of a tight-knit community in jeopardy, and of a charming woman whose most human failing is that she wants things to stay the same. Saying Grace is about the fragility of human happiness and the strength of convictions, about keeping faith as a couple whether it keeps one safe or not. Beth Gutcheon has a gift for creating a world in microcosm and capturing the grace in the rhythms of everyday life.

Saying Grace

b49eec14-adf3-4f9c-b486-5b4329f3a142-1

Kentucky

Texas

Witty, wise, and hope-filled, Five Fortunes is a large-hearted tale of five vivid and unforgettable women who know where they've been but have no idea where they're going. A lively octogenarian, a private investigator, a mother and daughter with an unresolved past, and a recently widowed politician's wife share little else except a thirst for new dreams, but after a week at the luxurious health spa known as "Fat Chance" their lives will be intertwined in ways they couldn't have imagined. At a place where doctors, lawyers, spoiled housewives, movie stars, and captains of industry are stripped of the social markers that keep them from really seeing one another, unexpected friendships emerge, reminding us of the close links between the rich and the poor, fortune and misfortune, and the magic of chance.

Previously owned.  Edge, cover and corner wear 

A large hearted tale of five memorable women who know where they’ve been but don’t know where they’re going. The quintessential American women’s story.

Georgia

Illinois

A novel about love developing between two single parents.

Domestic Pleasures

5a015def-890b-4bf4-ae48-a293a2de878f-0

Some stains on edges, in excellent reading condition.

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

In April 1940, as the Nazis march into Denmark, Sydney Brant, a wealthy girl of the Dundee summer colony, marries a gifted Danish pianist, Laurus Moss. They believe they are well matched, as young lovers do, but Laurus's beloved family is in Copenhagen, hostage to what the fortunes of Hitler's war will bring. By the time the war is over, Laurus's family has played an active role in Denmark's grassroots rescue of virtually all seven thousand of the country's Jews. Meanwhile, in America, Sydney has led a group knitting for the war effort, and had a baby. Combining the story of one long American twentieth-century marriage with one of the most stirring stories of World War II, Leeway Cottage is a beautifully written tour de force of a novel.

In a small town called Dundee on the coast of Maine, an old woman named Hannah Gray begins her story: "Somebody said ''true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about, and few have seen.'' I''ve seen both, and I don''t know how to tell you which is worse."

Hannah has decided, finally, to leave a record of the passionate and anguished long-ago summer in Dundee when she met Conary Crocker, the town bad boy and the love of her life. First love often brings astonishment, joy and frustration, but theirs is somehow also mixed with something frightening. Hannah discovers, as Conary and others in the town soon suspect, that there is a very unquiet and angry spirit inhabiting the house that Hannah''s stepmother has rented for the summer.

This spare, piercing and unforgettable novel bridges two centuries and two intense love stories as Hannah and Conary''s fate is interwoven with the tale of a marriage that took place in Dundee a hundred years earlier. Hannah says "I don''t suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess at, and many more things that we can''t." But she knows that ghosts are utterly real as well as metaphoric, and is haunted by the sense that if she could have learned who this ghost was, and what it wanted, it might have made a difference.

Ghosts haunt places where they have been deeply happy or intensely bitter in life. But this one''s places have been disturbed. The house where it is seen was no one''s home; it was first a schoolhouse, and originally stood not in Dundee but in an island village now abandoned and lost. What happened in that place, to a family trapped in a murderous pattern that seems to echo eerily through time, becomes the question that haunts Hannah and Conary and will keep you guessing until the last chilling page.

More Than You Know is a haunting novel that bridges two centuries, two mother-daughter relationships, and two tragic love stories.

Hannah has a passionate and painful story of true love and loss: the story of a ghost that appeared in her life, and in the life of Conary Crocker, the wild and appealing boy who loved her.

Interwoven with their love story is a story of a marriage that took place in Dundee a hundred years earlier. As the parallels and differences between the two families are revealed, the reader comes to understand that someone in the nineteenth-century story has become the very unquiet soul haunting the twentieth. But not until the end do we learn (as Hannah never can) what force of mischance and personality has led to so much damage, and no one knows if such damage is ever at an end.

"Beth Gutcheon is one of the elect. One of those few novelists who write truthfully and movingly about everything life offers."--Susan IsaacsMore Than You Know is a haunting novel that bridges two centuries, two mother-daughter relationships, and two tragic love stories. In a small town called Dundee on the coast of Maine, an old woman named Hannah Gray begins her story by saying "Somebody said ''true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about, and few have seen.'' I''ve seen both, and I don''t know how to tell you which is worse."

Hannah has a passionate and painful story of true love and loss: the story of a ghost that appeared in her life, and in the life of Conary Crocker, the wild and appealing boy who loved her.

Interwoven with their love story is a story of a marriage that took place in Dundee a hundred years earlier. As the parallels and differences between the two families are revealed, the reader comes to understand that someone in the nineteenth-century story has become the very unquiet soul haunting the twentieth. But not until the end do we learn (as Hannah never can) what force of mischance and personality has led to so much damage, and no one knows if such damage is ever at an end.

"Beth Gutcheon is one of the elect. One of those few novelists who write truthfully and movingly about everything life offers."--Susan Isaacs

From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Still Missing, More Than You Know, and Gossip comes the first entry in a stylish and witty mystery series featuring a pair of unlikely investigators--a shrewd novel of manners with a dark heart of murder at its center, set in small-town New England.

Indulging their pleasure in travel and new experiences, recently retired private school head Maggie Detweiler and her old friend, socialite Hope Babbin, are heading to Maine. The trip--to attend a weeklong master cooking class at the picturesque Victorian-era Oquossoc Mountain Inn--is an experiment to test their compatibility for future expeditions.

Hope and Maggie have barely finished their first aperitifs when the inn's tranquility is shattered by the arrival of Alexander and Lisa Antippas and Lisa's actress sister, Glory. Imperious and rude, these Hollywood one-percenters quickly turn the inn upside-down with their demanding behavior, igniting a flurry of speculation and gossip among staff and guests alike.

But the disruption soon turns deadly. After a suspicious late-night fire is brought under control, Alex's charred body is found in the ashes. Enter the town's deputy sheriff, Buster Babbin, Hope's long-estranged son and Maggie's former student. A man who's finally found his footing in life, Buster needs a win. But he's quickly pushed aside by the "big boys," senior law enforcement and high-powered state's attorneys who swoop in to make a quick arrest.

Maggie knows that Buster has his deficits and his strengths. She also knows that justice does not always prevail--and that the difference between conviction and exoneration too often depends on lazy police work and the ambitions of prosecutors. She knows too, after a lifetime of observing human nature, that you have a great advantage in doing the right thing if you don't care who gets the credit or whom you annoy.

Feeling that justice could use a helping hand--as could the deputy sheriff--Maggie and Hope decide that two women of experience equipped with healthy curiosity, plenty of common sense, and a cheerfully cynical sense of humor have a useful role to play in uncovering the truth.

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Beth Gutcheon

More Than You Know (71)

Beth Gutcheon

Five Fortunes

Beth Gutcheon

Five Fortunes

Beth Gutcheon

The Affliction

Beth Gutcheon

Leeway Cottage

Beth Gutcheon

Death at Breakfast

Beth Gutcheon

Good-Bye and Amen

Beth Gutcheon

Good-Bye and Amen 14C

Beth Gutcheon

More Than You Know

Beth Gutcheon

Saying Grace

Beth Gutcheon

More Than You Know

Beth Gutcheon

Five Fortunes

Beth Gutcheon

Five Fortunes

Beth Gutcheon

Five Fortunes

Beth Gutcheon

More Than You Know

Beth Gutcheon

Domestic Pleasures

Beth Gutcheon

The Affliction

Beth Gutcheon

Leeway Cottage

Beth Gutcheon

More Than You Know

Beth Gutcheon

Leeway Cottage

Beth Gutcheon

Five Fortunes

Beth Gutcheon

The Affliction

Beth Gutcheon

Death at Breakfast

Beth Gutcheon

The Affliction