Lionel Shriver

Shriver approaches the tragedy of a high-school massacre from the point of view of the killer's mother. Eva, in the letters she writes to her estranged husband, probes the upbringing of their more-than-difficult child and reveals herself to have been a reluctant mother. As the schisms in her family unfold, the story draws closer to an unexpected climax that holds breathtaking surprises and its own hard-won redemption.

It is 2029. The Mandibles have been counting on a sizable fortune filtering down when their 97-year-old patriarch dies. Yet America's soaring national debt has grown so enormous that it can never be repaid. Under siege from an upstart international currency, the dollar is in meltdown. A bloodless world war will wipe out the savings of millions of American families. Their inheritance turned to ash, each family member must contend with disappointment,...

When her massively overweight brother, a once slim, hip New York Jazz pianist, comes for a visit, Pandora is forced to choose between her exercise fanatic husband and her brother, who desperately needs her support in losing weight.

For ten years, Estrin Lancaster has fled Philadelphia. From the Philippines to Berlin, she's been a traveler without a destination, an expatriate without a motherland. In each of the cities Estrin favors, she manages an apartment, a job, a lover, and she never tarries past the first signs of ennui. Her latest destination is Belfast, in Northern Ireland. After twenty years of ritualized violence, this city too is exhausted--a town where when one more...

A timely synthesis of Shriver's expansive work, this collection of thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays, and op-eds reveals a provocative, talented writer at her most assured.

"Ten short stories and two novellas that explores the idea of property in every meaning of the word ... These pieces illustrate how our possessions act as proxies for ourselves, and how tussles over ownership articulate the power dynamics of our relationships"--Amazon.com

A satirical novel about exercise and fitness culture. Allergic to group activities of any kind, all her life Serenata has run, swum, and cycled on her lonesome. But now that she's hit 60, all that physical activity has destroyed her knees. As she contemplates surgery with dread, her previously sedentary husband Remington, recently and ignominiously redundant, chooses this precise moment to discover exercise. Which should be good for his health, right?...

Compiles the best literary essays of the year 2019 which were originally published in American periodicals.