Gail Godwin

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Virginia

Award-winning, "New York Times" bestselling author Gail Godwin's penetrating and haunting narrative about intimacy and loss and remorse, set against a background of world-changing events.

Flora

f0ce6b50-eaa7-4b8a-82c6-356a9ef4beab-1

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Oklahoma

"As always, wry, beady­eyed, acute." --Margaret Atwood, via Twitter

From the bestselling, award-winning author of Flora and Evensong comes the story of two remarkable women and the complex friendship between them that spans decades.

When the dean of Lovegood Junior College for Girls decides to pair Feron Hood with Merry Jellicoe as roommates in 1958, she has no way of knowing the far-reaching consequences of the match. Feron, who has narrowly escaped from a dark past, instantly takes to Merry and her composed personality. Surrounded by the traditions and four-story Doric columns of Lovegood, the girls--and their friendship--begin to thrive. But underneath their fierce friendship is a stronger, stranger bond, one comprised of secrets, rivalry, and influence--with neither of them able to predict that Merry is about to lose everything she grew up taking for granted, and that their time together will be cut short.

Ten years later, Feron and Merry haven't spoken since college. Life has led them into vastly different worlds. But, as Feron says, once someone is inside your "reference aura," she stays there forever. And when each woman finds herself in need of the other's essence, that spark--that remarkable affinity, unbroken by time--between them is reignited, and their lives begin to shift as a result.

Luminous and masterfully crafted, Old Lovegood Girls is the story of a powerful friendship between talented writers, two college friends who have formed a bond that takes them through decades of a fast-changing world, finding and losing and finding again the one friendship that defines them.

Old Lovegood Girls

6b5c9573-8086-42a9-804f-32d3a290a08b-1

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

Violet Clay had come to New York City from Charleston to take the art world by storm. But nine years, many affairs, and thousands of drinks later, the reality of her shadow life is made clear when she is fired from her job as a freelance illustrator. That same day, she hears that her beloved Uncle Ambrose, an unsuccessful writer, has shot himself. As Violet collects the shattered pieces of her uncle's life, she is forced to face herself and her own tattered dreams. And what she discovers is that she has just been going through the motions of living. She's not even sure she can do anything else. But she's in her mid-thirties and knows she still has time to try again. If she succeeds, she will have broken from her family of dreamers forever and can deservedly claim both the rich rewards and frustrating adversities of the artist's life....

Violet Clay

49467c4b-31f4-48d4-9447-a8f82321f38b-1

The first page is wrinkled - the other pages are unaffected. There is also a small tear on the upper back cover by the spine. Please see pictures.

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Ohio

Justin Stokes would never forget the summer she turned fourteen, nor the woman who transformed her bleak adolescent life into a wondrous place of brilliant color. In the little pondside hut also known as the “finishing school,” eccentric, free-spirited Ursula DeVane opened up a world full of magical possibilities for Justin, teaching her valuable lessons of love and loyalty, and encouraging her to change, to learn, to grow. But the lessons of the finishing school have their dark side as well, as Justin learns how deep friendship can be shattered by shocking, unforgivable betrayal.

The Finishing School

3c714d68-43fe-4ff9-81ce-fe2f1f99075e-1

California

Narrates the life of a young female Episcopal priest in High Balsam, a small, economically distressed Smoky Mountain town, which is shaken up by the arrival of three strangers

Evensong

e6e24b74-def6-43d1-a31a-be0d2c5caef0-1

Connecticut

"[A] BRILLIANT, WITTY AND PROVOCATIVE NEW NOVEL." --San Francisco Chronicle As a young woman, the brilliant and eternally curious Magda Danvers took the academic world by storm. Then, to everyone's surprise, she married Francis Lake, a mild, midwestern seminarian, who has devoted his life to taking care of his charismatic wife. Now, Magda's grave illness puts their marriage to its ultimate test. Though facing her "Final Examination," Magda continues to arouse her visitors with compelling thoughts and questions. Into this provocative atmosphere comes Alice Henry, retreating from family tragedy and a crumbling marriage to novelist Hugo Henry. But is it the incandescence of Magda's ideas that draws Alice, or the secret of "the good marriage" that she is desperate to discover? For Alice, Hugo, Francis, and Magda will learn that the most ideal relationship--even a perfect marriage--doesn't come without a price.... "COMPELLING WRITING...REMARKABLY SKILLFUL...Gail Godwin shows herself to be at the height of her considerable power as a storyteller and a writer." --The Boston Globe "ONE OF HER FINEST BOOKS...It is not only a well-written story, but a mature and wise one, affirmative in its vision of love, unblinking in its portrayal of tragic loss." --Atlanta Journal & Constitution "FASCINATING...[A] BIG SUMPTUOUS BOOK...HER BEST NOVEL." --Entertainment Weekly "A BRILLIANTLY CRAFTED NOVEL, full of fun and mischief and resonating with wisdom and moral depth." --New Woman A Featured Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club

The Good Husband

3e032f45-8455-4c65-959b-3264489cc30c-1

#hardcover #fiction #protectivecover #formerlibrarybook #heartbreaking

Isolated in a decaying family home while her father performs secret work at the end of World War II, 10-year-old Helen, grieving the losses of her mother and grandmother, bonds with her sensitive young aunt while desperately clinging to the ghosts and stories of her childhood.

#hardcover #Novel#Family#GrandStorytelling

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

New Jersey

A Southern Family

Rhode Island

A NOVEL

EVENSONG

Longlisted for the 2020 Grand Prix de littérature américaine
Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2017 (Top 10)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books 2017
Indie Next Summer 2018 Pick For Reading Groups

The haunting tale of a desolate cottage, and the hair-thin junction between this life and the next, from bestselling National Book Award finalist Gail Godwin.

After his mother's death, eleven-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there thirty years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life. Eventually she was inspired to take up painting so she could capture its utter desolation.

The islanders call it "Grief Cottage," because a boy and his parents disappeared from it during a hurricane fifty years before. Their bodies were never found and the cottage has stood empty ever since. During his lonely hours while Aunt Charlotte is in her studio painting and keeping her demons at bay, Marcus visits the cottage daily, building up his courage by coming ever closer, even after the ghost of the boy who died seems to reveal himself. Full of curiosity and open to the unfamiliar and uncanny given the recent upending of his life, he courts the ghost boy, never certain whether the ghost is friendly or follows some sinister agenda.

Grief Cottage is the best sort of ghost story, but it is far more than that--an investigation of grief, remorse, and the memories that haunt us. The power and beauty of this artful novel wash over the reader like the waves on a South Carolina beach.

Grief Cottage

d48b8a7c-cfdd-4330-98fe-f23a97d69c38-1

New York

"A big, entertaining novel...Rich in character and place and humanity...Gail Godwin is a wonderful writer." THE BOSTON GLOBE At the death of Leonard Strickland, beloved Southern gentleman, husband and father, his family is faced with the unknown. Nell always relied on the husband of her youth for security and friendship. Fiercely independent Cate and perfect Lydia have spent their lives vying for the love and approval their father generously gave. And as each woman begins to view her life, her past, and the possibilities of the future with new eyes, each belatedly discovers that life and death are impossible to plan, and that the past that has kept them apart can bring them closer to themselves and one another....

Mother and Two Daughters

eda50f1f-b4d6-4736-85e5-253af909b952-1

#fiction #paperback #paranormal #atmospheric #drama #grief #ghosts #familydrama

Georgia

The haunting tale of a desolate cottage, and the hair-thin junction between this life and the next, from bestselling National Book Award finalist Gail Godwin. After his mother's death, eleven-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt Charlotte, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Tourists like to buy Charlotte's portraits of the empty beach cottage nearby, enchanted by its rustic desolation. The islanders call it "Grief Cottage," because a boy and his parents disappeared from it during a hurricane fifty years before. Their bodies were never found. During his lonely hours while Aunt Charlotte is in her studio painting and keeping her demons at bay, Marcus visits the cottage daily, building up his courage by coming ever closer, even after the ghost of the boy who died seems to reveal himself. Full of curiosity and open to the unfamiliar and uncanny given the recent upending of his life, he courts the ghost boy, unsure whether he is friendly or follows some sinister agenda. Grief Cottage is the best sort of ghost story, but it is far more than that--an investigation of grief, remorse, and the memories that haunt us. The power and beauty of this artful novel wash over the reader like the waves on a South Carolina beach.

#paperback #fiction #ghosts #tragic #haunting

Maryland

#fiction #womencollegegraduates #nuns #teacherstudentrelationships #nineteenfifties #northcarolina #catholicschools Description
Product Description
From Gail Godwin, three-time National Book Award finalist and acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Evensong and The Finishing School, comes a sweeping new novel of friendship, loyalty, rivalries, redemption, and memory. 

It is the fall of 1951 at Mount St. Gabriel’s, an all-girls school tucked away in the mountains of North Carolina. Tildy Stratton, the undisputed queen bee of her class, befriends Chloe Starnes, a new student recently orphaned by the untimely and mysterious death of her mother. Their friendship fills a void for both girls but also sets in motion a chain of events that will profoundly affect the course of many lives, including the girls’ young teacher and the school’s matriarch, Mother Suzanne Ravenel. 

Fifty years on, the headmistress relives one pivotal night, trying to reconcile past and present, reaching back even further to her own senior year at the school, where the roots of a tragedy are buried. 

In Unfinished Desires, a beloved author delivers a gorgeous new novel in which thwarted desires are passed on for generations–and captures the rare moment when a soul breaks free.  

Michigan

a tale of unfinished desires

Unfinished Desires 

1a918c59-ccd2-4f2c-8179-86242fdfe958

The Odd Woman

6feaf440-7b97-4ec9-84fe-e69fc4fbb850-1

Gail Goodwin

A Novel and Five New Stories

Seven months after the unexpected death of her husband, Rudy, Christina reflects on their nearly thirty years of life together, the vital bond between them, and her grief, from the perspective of their long-time ritual of getting together every evening at five o'clock to share drinks and their mutual love of language and music. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.

Save this search

Gail Godwin

Flora

Gail Godwin

Old Lovegood Girls

Gail Godwin

Violet Clay

Gail Godwin

The Finishing School

Gail Godwin

Evensong

Gail Godwin

The Good Husband

Gail Godwin

Flora

Gail Godwin

A Southern Family

GAIL GODWIN

EVENSONG

Gail Godwin

Grief Cottage

Gail Godwin

Mother and Two Daughters

Gail Godwin

Grief Cottage

Gail Godwin

Grief Cottage

Gail Godwin

Old Lovegood Girls

Gail Godwin

Unfinished Desires

Gail Godwin

The Odd Woman

Gail Goodwin

Evenings at Five