Cathleen Schine

"From the author compared to Norah 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,...

"There was a time when the family Künstler lived in the fairy-tale city of Vienna. Circumstances transformed that 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. An ill-timed visit forces twentysomething New Yorker Julian to shelter in place in Venice Beach with his glamorous and eccentric ninety-three-year-old grandmother, Mamie Künstler,...

Intelligent, sexy, and fortyish, Helen MacFarquhar is a woman in control of her life and everyone in it-until an anonymous love letter falls into her hands one summer morning. Helen has been leading a blissful existence as the proprietor of a small bookstore in a quaint New England seaside town. She beguiles her customers into buying the titles she recommends, and flirts shamelessly with nearly every one of the town's eccentric residents. But Helen's...

In this "witty novel about family, friendship, and survival of the fittest,"* Cathleen Schine, one of our most astute social observers, examines the origin of species alongside the origins of who we come to be. 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...

In Cathleen Schine's comic novel To the Birdhouse, newlywed Alice Brody appears to have the perfect life. The one fly in the ointment is her mother's detestable boyfriend, Louie Scifo: champion of incredibly bad taste and a bona fide stalker. After Alice's mother cuts him loose, Louie's determination to win back her love casts Alice's whole family into disarray. So Alice embarks on a mission to rid her mother of Louie once and for all, in this rambunctious...

The bestselling historical fiction basis for the Golden Globe winning film starring Alfred Molina and Miranda Richardson
Four English women who have never met agree to rent an Italian castle for the month of April with transformative effects in this “pleasant little story" (The New York Times)
A recipe for happiness: four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of wisteria, and solitude as needed.
The women at the center...