In a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1940s, schoolteacher George Caldwell yearns to find some meaning in his life. Alone with his teenage son for three days in a blizzard, Caldwell sees his son grow and change as he himself begins to lose touch with his life.

One hot afternoon in 1910, the Reverend Clarence Wilmot, standing in the rectory of the Fourth Presbyterian Church, experiences the last vestiges of his faith departing. True to this revelation, Clarence abandons the pulpit and becomes an encyclopedia salesman.

Henry Bech, the celebrated author of Travel Light, has been scrutinized, canonized and vilified by reviewers, academics, critics and readers across world. Suffering from temporary impotence and not-so-temporary writer's block, Bech finds renewed fame when he returns to his native America and Think Big, his all-time blockbuster, hits the shops.

On a spring day in Vermont, 78-year-old painter Hope Chafetz tells the story of her life to Kathryn, a young interviewer from New York. As the day wears on Kathryn and Hope try to understand one another across the gulf of age, experience and time, and subt

Gathering together almost all the short fiction that John Updike published between 1953 and 1975, this collection opens with Updike's autobiographical stories about a young boy growing up during the Depression in a small Pennsylvania town.

Taking its title from the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", this work traces one family's profound journey through four generations - and across the spiritual landscape of twentieth-century America.

Roger Lambert, a professor of Divinity at a New England university is convinced that religious belief can only be justified by recourse to pure faith. But when his wife flings herself into an affair with a younger man, his faith in his own placid life is t

Henry Bech, the celebrated author of "Travel Light", has been scrutinized, canonized and vilified by critics and readers across the world. This work explores the writing life and what happens when a writer becomes a literary celebrity.

Ben Turnbull is a 66 year-old retired investment consultant living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. Nevertheless, Ben's life, traced by his journal entri

In a moment of sudden inspiration Sarah Worth - S - has walked out on her husband to join the Ashram Arhat. Famous for his transcendent wisdom and divine immobility, the Arhat has transferred his ahram from India to Arizona, where he and his enthusiastic e