Sisters Beth and Jill share an experience of country life when they visit their aunt and uncle.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • With music pulsing on every page, this startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption “features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn't, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human” (The Chicago Tribune). One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. “Pitch perfect.... Darkly, rippingly funny.... Egan possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart.” —The New York Times Book Review

Claire Zachanassian, the richest woman in the world, returns to her poverty-stricken home town. The townspeople are ready to grovel for favours and select as their representative Anton Schell, for Claire and Anton had once been deeply in love. Claire arrives with a sinister menage. She soon announces that she has come for revenge on her onetime sweetheart, offering a million marks for his life. In the nightmarish climax Schell's friends sacrifice him to their greed.

Presents a guide in two parts that offers advice on being a gracious host as well as being a considerate guest, with specific suggestions for visits involving children, young adults, and elderly people.