Cathleen Schine

"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...

"Joy Bergman is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would prefer. She won't take their advice, and she won't take an antidepressant. Her marriage to their father, Aaron, has lasted through health and dementia, as well as some phenomenally lousy business decisions. The Bergman clan has always stuck together, growing as it incorporated in-laws, ex-in-laws, and same-sex spouses. But families don't just grow,...

Greta finds her life turned upside down by the arrival of her grown daughter, Elizabeth, by the increasingly eccentric behavior of her widowed mother, and by unexpectedly falling in love with someone other than her devoted husband.

The best-selling author of The Love Letter enchants readers again with a sweet and funny comedy of mannerscomplete with dogs. As anyone who has walked a dog in any city knows, dogs bring people together who would otherwise never meet. On one humble, rent-controlled block of Upper East Side Manhattan, neighbors become neighborly because of their dogs, and the canines are cupids for their sometimes lonely, often eccentric, and hopelessly romantic humans....

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...

"In the sleepy New England town of Loblolly By The Sea, a letter has arrived that is going to wake things up. It is a love letter--ardent, sensual and unsigned. As the letter falls into different hands, residents of the small town start to eye one another with renewed interest, wondering who it's for and who it's from."--Container.