In the small suburban town of Cold Spring Harbor, Evan Shephard and his young bride Rachel yearn to escape the mistakes of their parents. But as they discover, families exert a hold as tight as fate, and every way out only ends up back home.

Whether addressing the smothered desire of suburban housewives, the white-collar despair of Manhattan office workers or the heartbreak of a single mother with artistic pretensions, Richard Yates examines the hopes and disappointments of ordinary people with empathy and humour.

John Wilder is a successful salesman with a place in the country, an adoring wife and a ten-year-old son. But something is wrong. His family no longer interests him, his infidelities are leading him nowhere and he has begun to drink too much. Then one night, something inside John snaps and he calls his wife to tell her that he isn't coming home.

Even as little girls, Sarah and Emily are very different from each other. Emily looks up to her wiser and more stable older sister and is jealous of her relationship with their absent father, and later her seemingly golden marriage. This novel follows the two sisters from their childhood in the 1920s through the challenges of their adult choices.

A collection of stories of the lives of Manhattan office workers, a cab driver seeking immortality, frustrated would-be novelists, suburban men and their yearning, neglected women in the 1950s, the era when the American dream was finally coming true - and just beginning to ring a little hollow.

A collection of seven short stories themed around troubled relations.

Tells the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple whose empty suburban life is held together by the dream that greatness is only just round the corner. The author shows how Frank and April mortgage their hopes and ideals, betraying in the end not only each other, but their own best selves.

Robert Prentice is 18, and his dreams have disintegrated on the battlefields of Europe. At home, his mother, Alice, wraps herself in fantasy against the relentless disappointments of life. This novel describes post-war America, at odds with its identity, striving to combine prosperity and ideals, mercilessly exposed in the attempt to do so.

Young, newly married and intensely ambitious, Michael Davenport is trying to make a living as a writer. His adoring wife, Lucy, has a private fortune that he won't touch in case it compromises his art. She in turn is never quite certain of what is expected of her. All she knows is that everyone else seems, somehow, happier.

Whether addressing the smothered desire of suburban housewives, the white-collar despair of Manhattan office workers or the heartbreak of a single mother with artistic pretensions, Yates ruthlessly examines the hopes and disappointments of ordinary people.