In eight stories, a master of the form extends and magnifies her great themes—the vagaries of love, the passion that leads down unexpected paths, the chaos hovering just under the surface of things, and the strange, often comical desires of the human heart. Time stretches out in some of the stories: a man and a woman look back forty years to the summer they met—the summer, as it turns out, that the true nature of their lives was revealed. In others time is telescoped: a young girl finds in the course of an evening that the mother she adores, and whose fluttery sexuality she hopes to emulate, will not sustain her—she must count on herself. Some choices are made—in a will, in a decision to leave home—with irrevocable and surprising consequences. At other times disaster is courted or barely skirted: when a mother has a startling dream about her baby; when a woman, driving her grandchildren to visit the lakeside haunts of her youth, starts a game that could have dangerous consequences. The rich layering that gives Alice Munro's work so strong a sense of life is particularly apparent in the title story, in which the death of a local optometrist brings an entire town into focus—from the preadolescent boys who find his body, to the man who probably killed him, to the woman who must decide what to do about what she might know. Large, moving, profound, these are stories that extend the limits of fiction.

Jack is a romantic comedy, the first book in the series For The Love Of A Good Woman. It can be read as a standalone, but the characters are intertwined in the rest of the series. "Do I need to worry about this being poisoned?"Harper turned to me with a glare. "Excuse me?""Well, I mean, you already told me that you had plans to murder me at work. Figured maybe this was a sneak attack."Sean turned to Harper. "Seriously? You told him you had plans to murder him?" "No, I was posing a scenario in which we wouldn't be together anymore.""And one of those scenarios was you murdering him." Harper started to get flustered and couldn't find the right words to say. I inwardly laughed. The guys were just busting her chops, but I thought it was hilarious. She got herself into this and she could get herself out."I was just... I was saying that people break up and it wasn't smart to move in together."Cole was the next to speak up. "So he asks you to move in and you plot to murder him?" Jack I've never been much for relationships. Until I met her. She's feisty, every man's wet dream, and a heap load of trouble. Every instinct in me screams to take care of this woman, but she's independent and won't accept my help. I won't let that get me down though. I have to have this woman and I'll do everything in my power to have her. That is, if I don't f**k it up. But life sometimes throws curve balls that throw the best laid plans off course.HarperHe's the most delectable man I've ever seen and he wants me. The only problem is, he is too overbearing. I don't need a man to take care of me. I'm perfectly capable of providing for myself. My attraction to him is undeniable and our chemistry is off the charts. The more I fight this man, the more I want him. Need him. Our differences may be too big to overcome and he may not want me when he finds out the truth.

Nineteen-year-old Annabelle Worthington was born into a life of privilege, raised amid the glamour of New York society, with glorious homes on Fifth Avenue and in Newport, Rhode Island. But everything changed on a cold April day in 1912, when the sinking of the Titanic shattered her family and her privileged world forever. Finding strength within her grief, Annabelle pours herself into volunteer work, nursing the poor, igniting a passion for medicine that would shape the course of her life. But for Annabelle, first love, and a seemingly idyllic marriage, will soon bring grief - this time caused by the secrets of the human heart. Betrayed and pursued by a scandal she does not deserve, Annabelle flees New York for war-ravaged France, hoping to lose herself in a life of service. There, in the heart of the First World War, in a groundbreaking field hospital run by women, Annabelle finds her true calling, working as an ambulance medic on the front lines, studying medicine, saving lives. And when the war ends, Annabelle begins a new life in Paris - now a doctor, a mother, her past almost forgotten. . . Until a fateful meeting opens her heart to the world she had left behind. Finding strength in the most unlikely of friendships, pulling together the broken fragments of her life, Annabelle will return to New York one more time - this time as a changed woman, a woman of substance, infused with life's experience, building a future filled with hope ... out of the rich soil of the past. -- Publisher description.

Complex family novel including the involved coming-out

The debut novel from Nobel Prize–winning author Alice Munro, “one of the most eloquent and gifted writers of contemporary fiction” (The New York Times). “Munro has an unerring talent for uncovering the extraordinary in the ordinary.”—Newsweek Rural Ontario, 1940s. Del Jordan lives out at the end of the Flats Road on her father’s fox farm, where her most frequent companions are an eccentric bachelor family friend and her rough younger brother. When she begins spending more time in town, she is surrounded by women—her mother, an agnostic, opinionated woman who sells encyclopedias to local farmers; her mother’s boarder, the lusty Fern Dogherty; and her best friend, Naomi, with whom she shares the frustrations and unbridled glee of adolescence. Through these unwitting mentors and in her own encounters with sex, birth, and death, Del explores the dark and bright sides of womanhood. All along she remains a wise, witty observer and recorder of truths in small-town life. The result is a powerful, moving, and humorous demonstration of Alice Munro’s unparalleled awareness of the lives of girls and women.

With the ease and mastery that have won extraordinary acclaim for her writing, these eleven stories by Alice Munro explore the most intimate and transforming moments of experience—moments when the shape of life is set, moments of realization about the burden, the power, and the nature of love. A divorced woman returns to her childhood home where she confronts the memory of her parents’ confounding yet deep bond. The accidental near-drowning of a child exposes the fragility of the trust between children and parents. A young man, remembering a terrifying childhood incident, wrestles with the responsibility he has always felt for his younger brother. In these and other stories Alice Munro proves once again a sensitive and compassionate chronicler of our times. Drawing us into the most intimate corners of ordinary lives, she reveals much about ourselves, our choices, and our experiences of love.

Sean is the sixth book in the, For The Love Of A Good Woman series. It can be read as a standalone, but characters from other books appear throughout the series. Sean is a love triangle romance, but is also a comedy. "I'm not driving faster. It's against the law," Lillian said primly."You're with a cop!""But I'm not an officer. I could get pulled over and then I would get a ticket."I stared at her for a second in disbelief. "Are you kidding me?" I shouted. How did I possibly get stuck with the slowest driver in the world when I was after a suspect?"Shit. Where'd the car go?""It didn't go anywhere. It's an inanimate object.""What do you mean it's inanimate. It's moving!""But only because someone is making it move. It doesn't move on its own, therefore it's an inanimate object. So, it can't go anywhere. The correct way to say it is, 'where is the car'.""Just pull over the car and I'll walk. I can't deal with an English lesson while trying to do my job.""I can't pull over. There's nowhere safe to do so.""Then I'll jump from the car.""Now that's just silly. Do you realize how injured you could get?""At the speed you're going, I could probably land on my feet." SeanVira is every man's fantasy. She's sexy as hell and dynamite in bed, but I can't get her to commit to me. After finally seeing the light, I walk away, determined to move on. She's always there, though. She pulls me back in, making it impossible to walk away and always hoping this will be the time I'll change her mind.Lillian is prim, proper, and a grammar Nazi. She drives me absolutely insane, but under all that is a sexy teacher waiting for someone to help her let loose. She drives me crazy, both mentally and physically, but I'm not sure she's the woman for me. LillianSean is exactly the type of man I need to avoid. I'm not everything I appear to be and if someone took the time to get to know me, he would see that. Sean isn't one to stick around, though. He's crazy about a woman that is the complete opposite of me. How could I ever hope that he would see me the way he sees her? ViraI'm crazy about Sean, but he wants something I can't offer. No matter how many times he tells me he's through with me, he always comes back for more. Lately, though, he's been seeing another woman who is nothing like me. He seems to really like her and so do his friends. If I don't step up and make things right between us, I'll lose him for good.