Cathleen Schine Books

An enchanting, comic love letter to sibling rivalry and the English language. From the author compared to Nora Ephron and Nancy Mitford, not to mention Jane Austen, comes a new novel celebrating the beauty, mischief, and occasional treachery of language. The Grammarians are Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. They speak a secret “twin” tongue of their own as toddlers; as adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues, but this love, which has always bound them together, begins instead to push them apart. Daphne, copy editor and grammar columnist, devotes herself to preserving the dignity and elegance of Standard English. Laurel, who gives up teaching kindergarten to write poetry, is drawn, instead, to the polymorphous, chameleon nature of the written and spoken word. Their fraying twinship finally shreds completely when the sisters go to war, absurdly but passionately, over custody of their most prized family heirloom: Merriam Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition. Cathleen Schine has written a playful and joyful celebration of the interplay of language and life. A dazzling comedy of sisterly and linguistic manners, a revelation of the delights and stresses of intimacy, The Grammarians is the work of one of our great comic novelists at her very best.

From one of America’s greatest comic novelists, a hilarious new novel about aging, family, loneliness, and loveThe Bergman clan has always stuck together, growing as it incorporated in-laws, ex-in-laws, and same-sex spouses. But families don’t just grow, they grow old, and the clan’s matriarch, Joy, is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would have wished. When Joy’s beloved husband dies, Molly and Daniel have no shortage of solutions for their mother’s loneliness and despair, but there is one challenge they did not count on: the reappearance of an ardent suitor from Joy’s college days. And they didn’t count on Joy herself, a mother suddenly as willful and rebellious as their own kids.The New York Times–bestselling author Cathleen Schine has been called “full of invention, wit, and wisdom that can bear comparison to [ Jane] Austen’s own” (The New York Review of Books), and she is at her best in this intensely human, profound, and honest novel about the intrusion of old age into the relationships of one loving but complicated family. They May Not Mean To, But They Do is a radiantly compassionate look at three generations, all coming of age together.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Inspired by her account in The New Yorker of adopting a profoundly troubled dog named Buster, acclaimed author Cathleen Schine's The New Yorkers is a brilliantly funny story of love, longing, and overcoming the shyness that leashes us. On a quiet little block near Central Park, five lonely New Yorkers find one another, compelled to meet by their canine companions. Over the course of four seasons, they emerge from their apartments, in snow, rain, or glorious sunshine to make friends and sometimes fall in love. A love letter to a city full of surprises, The New Yorkers is an enchanting comedy of manners (with dogs!) from one of our most treasured writers.

There was a time when the family Künstler lived in the fairy-tale city of Vienna. Circumstances transformed the fairy tale into a nightmare, and in 1939 the Künstlers found their way out of Vienna and into a new fairy tale: Los Angeles, California, United States of America.

A “gem of a novel” that sends up marriage, academia, and literary stardom, by the New York Times–bestselling author of They May Not Mean To, But They Do (Publishers Weekly). In this delightful novel from an author who “has been favored in so many ways by the muse of comedy,” we meet Margaret Nathan, the brilliant but forgetful author of an unlikely bestseller (The New York Review of Books). Happily married to a benevolently egotistical, slightly dull but sexy professor, Margaret seems blessed—until she finds herself seduced by an eighteenth-century novel she discovers in the library. Wrapped in its lascivious world, Margaret begins to imitate its protagonist, embarking on a hilarious jaunt around Manhattan in search of renewed passion. Will she find fulfillment through her escapades or settle for her husband? Part romantic comedy, part intellectual parody, Rameau’s Niece is wise, affecting, and thoroughly entertaining.

When Joseph Weissmann divorced his wife, he was 78 years old and she was 75. Exiled from her elegant New York apartment by Joe's mistress, Betty is forced to move to a small, run-down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage. Joining her are Miranda and Annie, who dutifully come along to keep an eye on their capricious mother.

Helen MacFarquhar owns a tiny bookstore in a seaside town, where her life is exactly as she planned it, comfortable and full, but then an anonymous love letter arrives in her mail written by an unknown lover to a mysterious beloved. The letter becomes Helen's obsession.

When Jane unexpectedly encounters her cousin, Martha, in the Galapagos Islands, she feels that she finally has the opportunity to talk to her about their deteriorating friendship and find out what it was that caused their once strong bond to end so suddenly. Reprint.

In some mysterious family feud or unintended slight, Jane Barlow Schwartz lost a friend, her cousin and soul mate, Martha. But years later, surrounded by the exotic wildlife of the Galapagos, Jane and Martha meet again. There, amid the antics of blue-footed boobies and red-lipped batfish, Jane sets off on a quest through her family history to pinpoint the moment when Martha was no longer the Martha she knew. In the process, she ponders instinct, natural selection, and the oddities of evolution that transform us.

En una manzana de Nueva York conviven personajes de lo mas variopinto: una solterona resignada a no encontrar la pareja ideal, una celestina obsesionada por planear citas a ciegas para su hermano, un ligón empedernido, un divorciado desengañado del amor... Lo que une a Everett, Jody, Simon y Polly es su pasión por los perros. Y son sus adorables mascotas las que terminan por convertirse en tiernos cupidos que lanzan flechas a sus amos..., aunque suelan equivocarse de objetivo. Go Go Grill, el restaurante a la par que ONG del barrio, será la cocina donde se cuezan los enredos en los que se verán envueltos los protagonistas de esta deliciosa comedia coral.