Alison Lurie

Virginia Miner, a fifty-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children's folk rhymes. Despite carrying a U.S. passport, Vinnie feels essentially English and rather looks down on her fellow Americans. But in spite of that, she is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist who dresses more Bronco Billy than Beau Brummel. Also in London is Vinnie's colleague Fred Turner,...

In this “excellent” novel of “rare understanding” from a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, culture shock consumes a young Harvard couple in Los Angeles (The New York Times).
 
When his mentor at Harvard University suddenly leaves for Washington, Paul Cattleman finds himself adrift in the wilds of academia. After losing his fellowship, he is out of work and one thesis short of a PhD....

Two sociologists infiltrate a cult that pulls them into madness in this "barbed and richly entertaining" novel from a Pulitzer Prize–winning author (The Wall Street Journal).

Once the nation's most popular sociologist, Tom McMann searches for a research subject that will invigorate his career. Unlike any study he's seen before, he targets the Truth Seekers, an up-and-coming cult that seeks flying saucers, utopian...

In the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “excellent” debut, a professor’s wife searches for liberation at the hands of a music instructor (The New York Times).
 
Though born in New York, the men of Emmy Turner’s family have long found their spiritual home in the idyllic Convers College. Her father, brothers, and uncles entered the New England intellectual enclave as boys and came out...

An artists’ colony is a false paradise for a frustrated writer in this “witty, knowing, and perceptive” novel from a Pulitzer Prize–winning author (The New Yorker).
 
The mansion is called Illyria, but for the writers and artists who flock there each summer, it’s a Garden of Eden where every artistic curiosity is explored. Away from family, friends, and ordinary responsibilities, the creative...

"In this candid and bluntly humorous collection of essays on a wide range of topics, Lurie begins with a portrait of her life at Radcliffe during World War II when the smartest women in the country were treated like second-class citizens, the most scholarly among them expected to work in factories to support the war effort. She moves on to her unheralded, clumsy attempts and near failure to be a writer and, finally having reached a level of recognition,...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author dishes up a surprising satire about two couples making mischief on a college campus.
Unabridged CDs - 7 CDs, 9 hours