Olympia Biddeford's passionate affair with a married man nearly three times her age, results in her being exiled from society and forces her to make a new life for herself.

With all the narrative power and emotional immediacy that have made her novels acclaimed international bestsellers, Anita Shreve unfolds a richly engaging tale of marriage, money, and troubled times-the story of a pair of young newlyweds who, setting out to build a life together in a derelict beach house on the Atlantic coast, soon discover how threatening the world outside their front door can be.

Anita Shreve's hauntingly beautiful #1 bestseller and Oprah's Book Club selection about tragedy, grief, betrayal, and the 'impossibility of knowing another person.' As a pilot's wife, Kathryn has learned to expect both intense exhilaration and long periods alone, but nothing has prepared her for a late-night knock that lets her know her husband has died in a crash. Until now, Kathryn Lyons's life has been peaceful if unextraordinary: a satisfying job teaching high school in the New England mill town of her childhood; a picture-perfect home by the ocean; a precocious, independent-minded fifteen-year-old daughter; and a happy marriage whose occasional dull passages she attributes to the unavoidable deadening of time. As Kathryn struggles with her grief, she descends into a maelstrom of publicity stirred up by the modern hunger for the details of tragedy. Even before the plane is located in waters off the Irish coast, the relentless scrutiny of her husband's life begins to bring a bizarre personal mystery into focus. Could there be any truth to the increasingly disturbing rumors that he had a secret life?

This magnificent novel transports readers to the world of a prominent Boston family summering on the New Hampshire coast, and to the social orbit of a spirited young woman who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man, with cataclysmic results. The Fortune Rock's Quartet collects four of Anita Shreve's most beloved novels-Fortune's Rocks, The Pilot's Wife, Sea Glass, and Body Surfing-for the first time. The novels highlight Shreve's ability to illuminate women's lives across different eras and share a delightful detail: they are all set in the same coastal New England home, one that has inspired Shreve for over a decade. Any house with age to it can tell a million stories about the families who have lived there, and Shreve has been quoted as saying, ''You could base an entire life's work on the people who come in and out of a house.'' Fortune's Rocks depicts a spirited young woman at the turn of the 20th century who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man. In Sea Glass, a young couple's new marriage is rocked to the core by the 1929 stock market crash. The Pilot's Wife brings us to the present day, where Kathryn is unprepared her for the late-night knock that lets her know her husband has been killed in a plane crash. Sydney, the heroine of Body Surfing has already been once divorced and once widowed by the age of 29, and finds the fragile existence she has rebuilt for herself threatened when two brothers vie for her affections. "There's something addictive about Shreve's tales," according to USA Today, and this quality is on full display in the critically acclaimed novels of The Fortune Rock's Quartet. No one writes more compellingly than Anita Shreve about marriage, family, the depths of our strength and resolve, and the supreme courage that it takes to love.

This magnificent novel transports readers to the world of a prominent Boston family summering on the New Hampshire coast, and to the social orbit of a spirited young woman who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man, with cataclysmic results. The Fortune Rock's Quartet collects four of Anita Shreve's most beloved novels-Fortune's Rocks, The Pilot's Wife, Sea Glass, and Body Surfing-for the first time. The novels highlight Shreve's ability to illuminate women's lives across different eras and share a delightful detail: they are all set in the same coastal New England home, one that has inspired Shreve for over a decade. Any house with age to it can tell a million stories about the families who have lived there, and Shreve has been quoted as saying, ''You could base an entire life's work on the people who come in and out of a house.'' Fortune's Rocks depicts a spirited young woman at the turn of the 20th century who falls into a passionate, illicit affair with an older man. In Sea Glass, a young couple's new marriage is rocked to the core by the 1929 stock market crash. The Pilot's Wife brings us to the present day, where Kathryn is unprepared her for the late-night knock that lets her know her husband has been killed in a plane crash. Sydney, the heroine of Body Surfing has already been once divorced and once widowed by the age of 29, and finds the fragile existence she has rebuilt for herself threatened when two brothers vie for her affections. "There's something addictive about Shreve's tales," according to USA Today, and this quality is on full display in the critically acclaimed novels of The Fortune Rock's Quartet. No one writes more compellingly than Anita Shreve about marriage, family, the depths of our strength and resolve, and the supreme courage that it takes to love.

An Oprah's Book Club selection, this gripping and powerfully wrought novel from the bestselling author of The Weight of Water is a stunning meditation on grief, betrayal and 'the ultimate unknowability of those closest to us' (Daily Telegraph) Who can guess what a woman will do when the unthinkable becomes her reality? Being married to a pilot has taught Kathryn Lyons to be ready for emergencies, but nothing has prepared her for the late-night knock on her door and the news of her husband's fatal crash. As Kathryn struggles through her grief, she is forced to confront disturbing rumours about the man she loved and the life that she took for granted. Torn between her impulse to protect her husband's memory and her desire to know the truth, Kathryn sets off to find out if she ever really knew the man who was her husband. In her determination to test the truth of her marriage, she faces shocking revelations about the secrets a man can keep and the actions a woman is willing to take. 'Enthralling' -Anita Brookner, author of the Booker Prize-winning Hotel du Lac 'Compellingly told, brilliantly observed, lyrically written and when you get to the last page you simply want to run out and buy everything she's ever written' -Sunday Independent

At the age of 29, Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing once again, she has answered an ad to tutor the teenage daughter of a well-to-do couple as they spend a sultry summer in their oceanfront New Hampshire cottage. But when the Edwards' two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, arrive at the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web of old tensions and bitter divisions. As the brothers vie for her affections, the fragile existence Sydney has rebuilt for herself is threatened. With the subtle wit, lyrical language, and brilliant insight into the human heart that has led her to be called "an author at one with her métier (Miami Herald), Shreve weaves a novel about marriage, family, and the supreme courage that it takes to love.