Sue Miller Book order

Exploring the complexities of human relationships and ethical dilemmas, this collection of stories delves into the moral landscape of contemporary life. Through nuanced characters and intricate narratives, the author examines themes of love, loss, and the choices that define us. Each story presents a unique perspective on the struggles and triumphs of individuals navigating their personal and societal challenges, offering readers a profound reflection on modern morality.

Set against the backdrop of 1960s New York, the book delves into the evolution of Cuban dance music, spotlighting key figures like José Fajardo and Johnny Pacheco. It explores the Cuban flute style's transformation post-1959 revolution and the vibrant charangas that thrived during the chachachá and pachanga craze, often overlooked in existing literature. By addressing issues of race, class, and identity, alongside musical transcriptions and interviews, it uncovers a rich history and the unique sabor that emerged from the interplay between Cuban and New York musical cultures.

'Penetrating, intelligent, humane, funny too ... Smart and powerfully alive' Tessa Hadley 'Superb' Daily Mail 'A poignant page-turner, delving deep into our most intimate relationships' Evening Standard Annie is the great love of Graham's life. Here they are in late middle-age, the photographer and the bookseller, so mismatched and yet so well-matched. Theirs is a happy marriage of nearly thirty years - and even the happiest of marriages, Graham tells himself, have their secrets. Then the unthinkable happens, and suddenly Annie is alone, stumbling in the dark. How much can we ever know the people who love us? 'With what exquisite truth Sue Miller writes ... I was completely wrapped up in the beautifully, and often so tenderly observed rollercoaster of grief. An invaluably moving book' Juliet Nicolson 'It's absolutely wonderful - detailed, precise emotions that Miller gets down in such a tender moving way ... Devasting. Brilliant' Claire Fuller

Have you ever imagined a different life? That's what the play was about, she was thinking abruptly. The wish to imagine what life could be, how it could change, if you were unencumbered. Did everyone who was married do this from time to time, imagine an unencumbered life?

Maybe some people just like to keep things private. Secret, I guess you'd say. Love came late to Meri, but in a rush: she met Nathan at thirty-six, he moved in a month later, and they married a month after that. Now they are moving to New England and a house of their own - a new life that Meri is not sure she even wants. She loves her husband, but feels there may be trouble ahead. Nathan, however, is boyishly excited that their next-door neighbour is the eminent Senator Tom Naughton, a political hero of his, now in his seventies. The Senator is nowhere to be seen, but Meri strikes up an unexpected friendship with his wife, the elegant Delia, sensing that she has much to learn from her - about marriage, love and motherhood. But soon she comes close to a terrible breach of trust that could ruin everything.

For Eva, the divorced and happily remarried mother of three children, and her adolescent middle child, Daisy, the death of Eva's second husband John in a car accident turns their lives upside down.

At the age of 72, Lily Roberts becomes a national celebrity when she writes her spiritual memoirs. Her children, Alan and Clary, are disturbed by Lily's intimate revelations about her married life. Ten years on, Lily comes to live with Alan, and the bitterness threatens to upset their lives.

Catherine Hubbard is at a crossroad in her San Francisco life. She is twice divorced - although she knows public opinion only seems to allow for one marital mistake - and her three children are grown and scattered. Then news comes that she has inherited her grandmother Georgia's home in Vermont. Putting her teaching job on hold, Catherine travels east to the house where she has frequently taken refuge, as a child from her mother's bouts of dementia and eventual suicide and later from the wreckage of her first marriage. Catherine finds in Vermont not only the ghosts of her own past but those of Georgia's as well. Diaries from the attic emerged of a young woman who had lost her own mother in her teens, who had been condemned to a sanitorium for tuberculosis, and there harboured a secret passion for a fellow patient. As Catherine increasingly comprehends the woman she has only ever known as a grandmother, she begins to feel as if she is living in two worlds, her own and Georgia's as a 'buried stream' below. With unforgettable characters so vivid you can almost see and touch them, THE WORLD BELOW is story telling at its most magical.

A compilation of twenty American short stories originally published in magazines and periodicals issued between January 2001 and January 2002, selected for inclusion by guest editor Sue Miller.