Stephen McCauley grew up outside of Boston and was more or less educated in public schools. He went to the University of Vermont as an undergraduate and studied for a year in France at the University of Nice.
The Phoebe Variations (2025) Jane Hamilton "Few writers have a body of work as varied, successful, and beautifully written as Jane Hamilton's. The latest addition to her oeuvre, The Phoebe Variations, is a wildly original story of complicated and unlikely family arrangements, the fluidity of identity, and just about every kind of love imaginable. Hamilton juggles her story lines and unforgettable characters with the humor, warmth, and flawless prose that will have readers giving Phoebe a standing ovation. Exactly the kind of life-affirming novel the world needs now."
The Expert of Subtle Revisions (2025) Kirsten Menger-Anderson "The Expert of Subtle Revisions begins with a mysterious disappearance and ends with a moving discovery. Along the way, Kirsten Menger-Anderson weaves together history, time travel, and a haunting love story. She also manages to raise stirring questions about identity, family, and what it means to record and revise history, especially one's own. A powerful and original novel that defies expectations in almost every chapter."
Every Tom, Dick & Harry (2025) Elinor Lipman "Elinor Lipman has been creating a singularly delightful and instantly recognizable literary universe. Lipmanland is a world adjacent to our own except the people there are more charming, the conversations are wittier, and love always prevails. Every Tom, Dick & Harry, weaves together estate sales, good and bad cops, and smalltown houses of ill-repute with effortless glee. Add sparkling dialogue, an improbably hilarious funeral, and one of the author's most endearing love stories and you have the Lipman Literary Landscape at its irresistible best. When events are too much to handle in the real world, there are few better breaks than entering this one. Passport optional."
Graceland (2023) Nancy Crochiere "If you like road trips, soap opera villainesses, lost loves, and found fathers - and who doesn't like them? - you'll love Nancy Crochiere's delightful, never-a dull-chapter first novel. Graceland is an expertly structured tale of family secrets that get revealed over the course of a trip to Memphis and with Elvis's greatest hits playing in the background. Crochiere delivers enough humor and surprises to keep the reader eagerly turning pages and enough heart to make this one memorable and satisfying journey."
The Sweetest Days (2021) John Hough Jr "A riveting exploration of the challenges and complexities of a long, loving marriage. John Hough's economical prose and sharp dialogue cut to the heart of the secrets and longings that hold people together even while threatening to tear them apart. This is an insightful and beautifully written novel that will please readers of Richard Russo, David Gates, and even Raymond Carver. Urgent, unsentimental, and very much of the moment."
Minus Me (2021) Mameve Medwed "Medwed writes with heart and charm, warmth and wisdom. She knows how to evoke laughter and tears, balance the joys and the challenges of the complicated relationships she describes, and bring to life an entire Maine town."
Musical Chairs (2020) Amy Poeppel "What kind of writer is Amy Poeppel? Warm, generous, funny, and full of surprises. In her third novel, a large, musical family (and their many friends, lovers, and groundskeepers) assemble in the shabby chicest corner of rural Connecticut over the course of one long, hot summer. What ensues is part classical French farce, part touching family comedy, and 100% page-turning delight. Cue up some chamber music, pull out a lawn chair, and prepare to binge read this gleefully entertaining novel."
The Great Believers (2018) Rebecca Makkai "The Great Believers is a sprawling, wildly ambitious novel. Rebecca Makkai brings to life a large cast of characters, and weaves together the threads of her storyline with the ease and authority of a skilled magician. But in the end, what makes this novel such a rousing success is the emotional truthfulness of her characters and the way she captures the panic and rage of the period. I came to feel I knew these people, and was moved by the dilemmas and difficult choices they had to face."
Idyll Fears (2017) (Thomas Lynch, book 2) Stephanie Gayle "A fascinating mystery-and a believable, complicated hero."
The People We Hate at the Wedding (2017) Grant Ginder "It turns out that the people we hate at the wedding are the very people we most love reading about. Grant Ginder's smart, funny novel is madly insightful and contains some of the most delightfully difficult and fabulously flawed characters I've encountered in a long time."
The Innocents (2012) Francesca Segal "In Francesca Segal's capable hands, The Age of Innocence is transformed into a very contemporary novel of religious traditions, financial misdeeds, and the way family happiness sustains and strangles. Writing with warmth, humor, and control, Segal brings to life an impressively large cast of characters, and makes The Innocents a generous, memorable first novel that I found hard to put down."
