Selected Novels Volume Two

Book excerpt: Two unforgettable novels from the author of the New York Times bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club selection, Songs in Ordinary Time, “a writer to reckon with” (The Washington Post). The highly acclaimed novelist Mary McGarry Morris has been hailed as “a credible heir to Carson McCullers . . . a wise, unsentimental portraitist of the lonely, the damned, the desperate and the incomplete” (The New York Times Book Review) as well as “a cross between Elizabeth Gaskell and David Lynch” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). In the two powerful novels collected here, Morris offers compassionate accounts of damaged and desperate people struggling to survive. The Lost Mother: Told from the perspective of twelve-year-old Thomas, The Lost Mother follows a shattered family in rural Vermont during the Great Depression. Deserted by their mother, Thomas and his eight-year-old sister, Margaret, are reduced to living in a tent with their father, Henry. When a wealthy neighbor begins to woo the children as companions for her strange, housebound son, Henry weighs an unexpected proposition, the consequences of which may cost him everything. “A perfectly lovely book about perfectly awful things.” —The Washington Post “The author paints a brutal landscape and authentic characters with delicacy and precision.” —Publishers Weekly A Dangerous Woman: Named one of the five best novels of the year by Time magazine Emotionally unstable Martha Hogan is an outcast in her small Vermont town. She stares; she has violent crushes on people; and perhaps most unsettling, she cannot stop telling the truth. After a traumatic experience in her teens, the thirty-two-year-old now craves love and companionship. But her relentless honesty makes her painfully vulnerable to those around her, including her wealthy aunt and begrudging guardian, and a seductive man who preys on her desires. Bitter and distrusting, Martha is slowly propelled into a desperate attempt to gain control over her life. “Thrilling and deeply affecting.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “A powerful, disconcerting, and heartbreaking story of a woman who is most dangerous to herself.” —Library Journal