Nell Freudenberger Book order (chronological)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • FRESH AIR As a professor of physics at MIT, Helen Clapp disdains notions of the supernatural in favor of rational thought and proven ideas. So it’s perhaps especially vexing when, on an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday in June, she gets a phone call from a friend who has just died. That friend was Charlotte Boyce, Helen’s roommate at Harvard. The two women once confided in each other about everything: Helen’s struggles as a young woman in science, Charlie’s as a black screenwriter in Hollywood, their shared challenges as parents. But as the years passed, they gradually grew apart. And now Charlie is permanently, tragically gone. Drawn back into her friend’s orbit, Helen is forced to question the laws of the universe that have always steadied her mind and heart. Suspenseful, perceptive, deeply affecting, Lost and Wanted is a story of friends and lovers, lost and found, at the most defining moments of their lives.

From one of America's most dazzling talents ("Young writers as ambitious--and as good--as Nell Freudenberger give us reason for hope." --The New York Times Book Review) comes a cross-continental love story: a brilliantly observed, warmly engaging novel about the exhilarations--and complications--of getting, and staying, wed.Amina Mazid is twenty-four when she leaves Bangladesh for Rochester, New York, and for George Stillman, the husband who met and wooed her online. It's a twenty-first-century romance that echoes ancient traditions--the arranged marriages of her home country. And though George falls for Amina because she is "straightforward" and doesn't "play games," each is hiding something from the other. Amina struggles to find her place in America--as a Muslim woman, an aspiring teacher, a wife with her own desires. But it is only when they put an ocean between them that Amina and George will discover whether they have a future--or if their secrets will tear them apart. Traveling from American suburbs to the cities of South Asia, The Newlyweds is a tour de force--a novel as rich with misunderstandings as it is with unlikely connections.

Set in Los Angeles and Beijing, 'The Dissident' tells the story of a life in flux and a family near breaking point - and what happens when the two collide.

First highlighted in the "New Yorker" fiction issue, "Lucky Girls" is a collection of five novella-like stories that take place mostly in Asia--the debut of a new talent and a "New York Times" Notable Book.