A lot of people are attracted to their in-laws. But they pay attention to the warning signals. Usually prudent, history professor Jon Marcus has blundered through the flashing red lights. Twice. He's sleeping with his brother's wife and his wife's sister. Compounding Marcus's problems is the fallout, twenty-five years later, from a teenage romance with his cousin. When Jon's mother is diagnosed with lung cancer, relations with his wife, his contentious brothers, and the sisters-in-law begin to unravel. Outlaws is more than the story of illicit affairs with relatives. Marcus is helping direct...

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) was a short story writer and playwright with a rapier wit and an acerbic take on love, marriage, and friendship. Her aphorisms, published between 1958 and 1966, will delight aficionados of this aristocratic, subversive genre. Not all of the collection consists of aphorisms, strictly speaking: some are simply reflections, brutally honest as they are clever, on McLaughlin's own fears and foibles. Apercus is truly an autobiography in epigrams."