From the publisher: "Unfolding over the course of a single emotionally fraught day, this stunning novel encompasses a lifetime of dreams, regrets and reckonings. Maggie and Ira Moran are on a road trip from Baltimore, Maryland to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania to attend the funeral of a friend. Along the way, they reflect on the state of their marriage, its trials and its triumphs—through their quarrels, their routines, and their ability to tolerate each other's faults with patience and affection. Where Maggie is quirky, lovable and mischievous, Ira is practical, methodical and mired in reason. What begins as a day trip becomes a revelatory and unexpected journey,. Regarded by many as Tyler’s seminal work, Breathing Lessons evokes Jane Austen, Emma Straub, and other masters of the literary marriage."

From the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Accidental Tourist, a family drama about the quiet joys of making a life with the people you love—whether they’re family or not. Willa is a 61-year-old woman whose track record with men isn’t great, as we see through scenes set when she’s 11, 21, 41, and finally 61. They patronize her and expect to be waited on, while Willa doesn’t stand up for what she wants. Willa doesn’t even know what she wants. But then one day the phone rings, with news that her son’s ex-girlfriend Denise has been shot in Baltimore, and Denise’s daughter—presumably Willa’s granddaughter—needs someone to look after her. It’s a misunderstanding—these people are strangers to Willa—but she travels to Baltimore to lend a hand. Willa settles in to the rhythms of the family’s life, finding herself appreciated for herself for the first time. I enjoyed this quiet novel with characters you can root for (and root against, depending).

"The strangest thing about my wife's return from the dead was how other people reacted." So begins Tyler's 19th novel, published in 2012. This is no ghost story. Instead, it's about a man brought to reckoning when his wife dies in a tragic and unsettling accident at home. With his wife gone—and eventually, with the help of her reappearances—he finally brings himself to take a clear-eyed look, and ultimately come to terms with, the good and the bad of their marriage. Wistful, gentle, and quirky, and at once a tale of great sorrow and one of love and forgiveness. I ate up all the details, particularly those of the publishing variety: the main character helms a small vanity publisher in Baltimore, and his workplace stories were a riot.

A multigenerational tale of the Whitshank family and their Baltimore home. Seventy-something Red and Abby anchor the family: he works in construction, she's now a retired social worker. They live in a cherished home built by Red's father Junior; they raised their four kids in it and those kids are now grown and gone. But when Abby starts having intermittent memory troubles, the kids return home: prodigal son Denny and his responsible younger brother Stem move back in, and the two daughters, Nora and Amanda, start spending a lot more time at the family home. Moving back and forth in time, we get acquainted with each generation, learning the stories they tell themselves about family identity, as well as the secrets they've kept—and sometimes are still keeping—from each other. Tyler is at once a sharp and compassionate observer of family life; this was a poignant exploration of how we make meaning of our stories, how we cope with our reality, and how we may choose to both lean on and hide from the people we love. I enjoyed this for its plethora of savvy insights about family life, numerous pithy one-liners, and the steady presence of the house throughout, a character in its own right.

Tyler’s gift is to make the struggles of ordinary (fictional) people feel real, relatable, and relevant our own lives. In her new slim novel—just 192 pages—she introduces us to Micah Mortimer, a tech geek who has carefully calibrated his life to keep people at a distance. His strict routines give him security and his tech-support business, Tech Hermit, keeps him busy. But when two people with problems come to him for help, he realizes that the “good life” he’s built for himself is an illusion. Tyler’s wry humor keeps this sad, sweet story about a lonely man waking up to life from veering into the morose.

In her 24th novel, Anne Tyler offers a funny and wise meditation on the enduring imprint of one’s family of origin. This multigenerational story portrays life with the Garrett family of Baltimore over a sixty-year span, beginning with a rare vacation in 1959 and ending in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. In vignettes set every ten years or so, the common thread is the little kindnesses and cruelties that characterize the family, along with their constitutional inability to share their true thoughts and emotions with each other. In the final pages, one character compares the indelible imprint of his family to his daughter’s French braid: “That’s how families work,” he says. “You think you’re free of them, but you’re never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever.” The family may be exasperating, but the book is anything but. I loved this. For fans of Tyler’s Redhead by the Side of the Road and Elizabeth Strout’s Oh, William!

Tyler is a prolific, Pulitzer-winning author; The New York Times calls this one of her best. I've been meaning to read Anne Tyler for years, and when podcast guest Rebecca Smith (Jane Austen's 5x great niece) said she thought Tyler should be recommended reading for Jane Austen fans, I finally took the plunge. This was a favorite on a recent What Should I Read Next? episode. An enjoyable read that wasn't anything like I expected, and was relatable in surprising ways.

Shakespeare's comedy The Taming of the Shrew has been adapted for everything from film to opera to ballet to musical theater. Both Kiss Me, Kate and the 90s high school movie 10 Things I Hate About You (LOVE it) are based on the play. Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler brings a witty contemporary retelling for the Hogarth Shakespeare series. This one's on my TBR largely because of NPR, who calls this a "screwball of manners, more sweet than acidic, that actually channels Jane Austen more than Shakespeare." 242 pages.

Anissa Davis raved about Anne Tyler on episode 38 of WSIRN, having read everything Tyler has written, saying that her books are entertaining, but also with a layer of depth. She envelopes what daily life is like - with all the joys, ups and downs, and humor - and is very good at bringing her characters to life.