**A NEW YORKER AND LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A masterful and engrossing novel about a single mother’s collapse and the fate of her family after she enters a California state hospital in the 1970s.“A sweeping family epic that took me from one American coast to another…Simpson is so attuned to the family heart.” —Weike Wang, author of Joan Is Okay**When Diane Aziz drives her oldest son, Walter, from Los Angeles to college at UC Berke...

'Quietly devastating writing' The Observer'Commitment is a majestic novel' Yiyun Li, author of The Book of GooseA masterful and engrossing novel about a single mother's collapse and the fate of her family after she enters a California state hospital in the 1970s.When Diane Aziz drives her oldest son, Walter, from LA to college, it will be her last parental act before falling into a deep de...

A wonderfully provocative and appealing novel, from the much-loved author of Anywhere But Here*,* her first in ten years. It tells the story of two women whose lives entwine and unfold behind the glittery surface of Hollywood.Claire, a composer and a new mother, comes to LA so her husband can follow his passion for writing television comedy. Suddenly the marriage-once a genuine 50/50 arrangement-changes, with Paul working long hours and Claire left at home with a baby, Wil...

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” SelectionThe acclaimed author gives us a mesmerizing story of a family built, not by blood, but by second and third marriages and the relationships children have to “step” fathers, mothers and siblings long after their own parents have left them behind.When Julie, an actress in her forties, receives a phone call from her one-time stepfather’s newest family asking her to come to see him once more before he dies, she agrees to make the tri...

In her highly acclaimed first novel, Anywhere But Here, Simpson created one of the most astute yet vulnerable heroines in contemporary fiction. Now Mayan Atassi--once Mayan Stevenson--returns in an immensely powerful novel about love and lovelessness, fathers and fatherlessness, and the loyalties that shape us even when they threaten to destroy us.Now a woman of twenty-eight and finally on her own in medical school, Mayan becomes obsessed with the father she never knew, le...

In this flawless novella, Mona Simpson turns her powers of observation toward characters who, unlike Ann and Adele August in her bestselling Anywhere but Here, choose to stay rather than go.As a high school student in Green Bay, Bea Maxwell raised money for good causes; later, she became a successful real estate agent and an accomplished knitter. The one thing missing from her life is a romantic relationship. She soon settles comfortably into the role of s...

"Washington Square is perhaps the only novel in which a man has successfully invaded the feminine field and produced work comparable to Jane Austen's," said Graham Greene.Inspired by a story Henry James heard at a dinner party, Washington Square tells how the rakish but idle Morris Townsend tries to win the heart of heiress Catherine Sloper against the objections of her father. Precise and understated, the book endures as a matchless social study of New York in the mid-nineteenth ce...

Anywhere But Here is a moving, often comic portrait of wise child Ann August and her mother, Adele, a larger-than-life American dreamer. As they travel through the landscape of their often conflicting ambitions, Ann and Adele bring to life a novel that is a brilliant exploration of the perennial urge to keep moving, even at the risk of profound disorientation. Simpson's first novel is ultimately a heart-rendering tale of a mother and daughter's invaluable relationship.

In this flawless novella, Mona Simpson turns her powers of observation toward characters who, unlike Ann and Adele August in her bestselling Anywhere but Here, choose to stay rather than go.As a high school student in Green Bay, Bea Maxwell raised money for good causes; later, she became a successful real estate agent and an accomplished knitter. The one thing missing from her life is a romantic relationship. She soon settles comfortably into the role of stylish sp...

A national bestseller—adapted into a movie starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon—Anywhere But Here is the heart-rending tale of a mother and daughter. A moving, often comic portrait of wise child Ann August and her mother, Adele, a larger-than-life American dreamer, the novel follows the two women as they travel through the landscape of their often conflicting ambitions. A brilliant exploration of the perennial urge to keep moving, even at the risk of profound disorientation...

Mona Simpson's first two novels, Anywhere But Here and The Lost Father, won her literary renown and a wide following. Now, in her third novel, the narrator Ann Atassi has been replaced by a third-person narrator recounting the adventures of young Jane di Natali, but the theme remains the same: the search for, and the attempt to understand, the absent father.This time the father is a millionaire biotechnology magnate named Tom Owens. Into Owens's charmed life comes...

When an eavesdropping boy sets out to discover the obscure mysteries of his unravelling family, he uncovers instead what he least wants to know: the workings of his parents’ private lives. And even then he can't stop snooping.Miles Adler-Rich spies and listens in on his separating parents with the help of his friend Hector. The boys’ amateur detective work starts innocently enough. But in rifling through his mother’s dresser and snooping in her online diary, it isn...