An insightful domestic comedy, at once hilarious and extremely moving, Goodbye Without Leaving is the story of a woman's attempt to remain true to herself in a world of diminishing returns. As a bored graduate student, Geraldine Colshares is plucked from her too-tame existence when she is invited to tour as the only white backup singer for Vernon and Ruby Shakely and the Shakettes. The years she spends as a Shakette are a mixed blessing, however, for while they provide her with purpose and excitement, she ultimately submits to a conventional life of marriage, children, and bittersweet memories of what comes to seem a glorious past. With her usual dry wit and candor, Laurie Colwin follows Geraldine as she tries to reconcile her past with her future, to be an adult and still boogie in her soul.

A heartfelt novel about a midlife crisis and a woman tired of beingtaken for granted—and a reminder that family, like happiness, can take many forms. To the rest of the world, Polly Solo-Miller Demarest lives acharmed life. She has a beautiful home, a dashing lawyer husband, and two delightful children. But beneath this idyllic surface, the pressure of being the “perfect flower”of an illustrious family—and a stable, always-available wife, mother, and daughter—are getting to her. The spark has gone out of her marriage, and to her own surprise, she’s having an affair. What follows is at once cathartic and provoking, and both may be necessary states in order for Polly to become the kind of person she wants to be.

Josephine “Billy” Delielle and Francis Clemens are happily married—just not to each other. Another Marvelous Thing is the story of their affair, from its fabulous inception to its inevitable end. Billy and Francis couldn’t be more different, at least when it comes to age and disposition, but that doesn’t prevent them from falling in love and settling into the easy rhythms of romance—phone calls every morning, rendezvous every weekday afternoon, the odd out-of-town escape—despite both still being very partial to their spouses. In interconnected stories, Laurie Colwin deftly reveals each character’s point of view and examines, in razor-sharp detail, the “marvelous” and messy glory of modern love and the curious desires of the heart. This whirlwind romance, perfectly captured in Colwinesque frank and funny style, is firm proof that oppositesreally do attract.

This collection of stories about love and privacy is serious, funny, tender, and alive with the elegance and spirit that characterise Laurie Colwin's work. In these stories, the reader moves among young men and women: pianists, historians, book illustrators, architects; women who are composed and inimitably sassy; and men who are magnetic, adventurous in love, or fiendishly elusive. They are people who are experiencing, often for the first time, the starting, enriching, and maddening complications of adult life.

In her fifth and final novel, acclaimed author Laurie Colwin explores marriage and friendship, motherhood and careers, as experienced by a cast of delightfully idiosyncratic Manhattanites. At once a hilarious social commentary and an insightful, sophisticated modern romance, A Big Storm Knocked It Over stands as a living tribute to one of contemporary fiction's most original voices.

Within these fourteen hilarious and insightful tales of urban life, you'll meet: Raiford Phelps, an ornithologist who discovers new patterns of animal behavior when he meets Mary Leibnitz. Benno Morna, a temporary bachelor, free to indulge in TV, junk food, and Greenie Frenzel when his wholesome wife is out of town. Vincent Cadworthy and Guido Morris, whose elegant friendship is suddenly disrupted by Misty Berkowitz. Elizabeth Bayard, whose passion for order and civility does constant battle with her unruly loves. They are buffeted by the pressures of their jobs, imposed upon by their families and their surroundings, and remain ever hopeful of making sense of their lives. With compassion and biting wit, Laurie Colwin has created a new sort of comedy of manners. 'Colwin is ingenious, comedic and spirited' Boston Globe 'Colwin has single-handedly revitalized the short story' Los Angeles Times

A 'jewel of romantic comedy' (New York Times) from the late great author, adored by Nigella Lawson, Dolly Alderton, Katherine Heiny and Caroline O'Donoghue. It was just as she suspected: love turned you into perfect mush. GUIDO is not in the habit of falling in love with women he sees in museums. Until he meets HOLLY. Precise about everything, she knows what she likes: pressed sheets, oranges (but nothing orange-flavoured), tea on a tray - and now, Guido. Meanwhile VINCENT, Guido's eternally cheerful best friend and cousin, falls for his misanthropic new colleague, MISTY. She seems as uninterested in love as she is in Vincent (at first). Through courtship, arguments, wedding plans and other perils, the couples find a way to be happy (almost) all the time. 'Seriously wise, seriously wonderful, seriously comic - your life will be richer for it' Katherine Heiny 'Uplifting, funny, generous. One of the most comforting, clever novels I know' Samantha Ellis 'Human and humorous, full of wisdom and love' Emma Straub

After the sudden death of her husband, the author discovered the understanding that widows tend to receive; The Western world is not at all prepared to deal with something as certain as death. Our culture only prepares for life. Death and grief, on the other hand are completely ignored. No one has taught us how to treat a person who has suffered an important loss. Many well-intentioned but hurtful things are said this way, this is not because people dont care about your pain, but because most of them do not know how to behave around grief. When you first lose your spouse, you have no idea of what to expect either. Your whole life has turned around, sometimes without warning. Most likely, no one explained what you were about to encounter. This book tries to show you what to expect after the death of a spouse. It also pretends to be a reminder that grief doesnt need to involve negativity. But most of all, the author hopes her book will help you transform the thoughts that are keeping you anchored in the past. Why re-inventing yourself is so important. She hopes this book will give some much needed understanding to the widowed as well as to their family and friends.

When Sam Bax, that charming daredevil of a Boston lawyer, sails his boat into a storm off the coast of Maine, Elizabeth 'Olly' Bax, his wife and ardent sidekick, becomes a widow at the edge of twenty-seven. With no pretense of 'courage', Olly grieves, coping with the warmth and awkwardness of family ties and trying to rethink her own life. Realizing that her risks are as daring as any of Sam's -- while he chanced life and limb, Olly risks her heart -- she finds that love can take some surprising turns. Laurie Colwin depics Olly's recovery with humor, compassion, and a decided lack of sentimentally, creating a real heroine who remains true to her heart and still manages to keep her head. 'Colwin has written this spirited, insightful, often funny book with a keen sense of understatement that is extraordinarily powerful and moving' Cleveland Plain Dealer

Published for the first time in the UK, Laurie Colwin's much loved kitchen essays are perfect for fans of Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater. Weaving together memories, recipes, and wild tales of years spent in the kitchen, Home Cooking is Laurie Colwin's manifesto on the joys of sharing food and entertaining. From the humble hot-plate of her one-room apartment to the crowded kitchens of bustling parties, Colwin regales us with tales of meals gone both magnificently well and disastrously wrong. Never before published in the UK, this is hilarious, personal and full of Colwin's hard-won expertise. Home Cooking will speak to the heart (and stomach) of any amateur cook, professional chef, or food lover. Praise for Laurie Colwin: 'Everything food writing should be: funny, profound, inspiring and unaffected' Nigella Lawson 'I have in my kitchen a book called Home Cooking. And, in between following the recipes for Extremely Easy Old-Fashioned Beef Stew or Estelle Colwin Snellenberg's Potato Pancakes, I would frequently sit down on a little stool in my kitchen and read through one of the essays in that book. I never read through Joy of Cooking, and I can read The Silver Palate Cookbook standing up, but I always sat down to read these' Anna Quindlen Laurie Colwin is the author of five novels - Happy All the Time, Family Happiness, Goodbye Without Leaving, A Big Storm Knocked It Over and Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object - three collections of short stories - Passion and Affect, The Lone Pilgrim and Another Marvellous Thing - and two collections of essays, Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. Laurie Colwin died in 1992.

A 'jewel of romantic comedy' (New York Times) from the late great author, adored by Nigella Lawson, Dolly Alderton, Katherine Heiny and Caroline O'Donoghue. It was just as she suspected: love turned you into perfect mush. GUIDO is not in the habit of falling in love with women he sees in museums. Until he meets HOLLY. Precise about everything, she knows what she likes: pressed sheets, oranges (but nothing orange-flavoured), tea on a tray - and now, Guido. Meanwhile VINCENT, Guido's eternally cheerful best friend and cousin, falls for his misanthropic new colleague, MISTY. She seems as uninterested in love as she is in Vincent (at first). Through courtship, arguments, wedding plans and other perils, the couples find a way to be happy (almost) all the time. 'Seriously wise, seriously wonderful, seriously comic - your life will be richer for it' Katherine Heiny 'Uplifting, funny, generous. One of the most comforting, clever novels I know' Samantha Ellis 'Human and humorous, full of wisdom and love' Emma Straub

With a new foreword by Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, the triumphant sequel to Home Cooking by “a home cook, like you and me, whose charm and lack of pretension make her wonderfully human and a welcome companion as she chatters on about the small culinary accomplishments and discoveries that occur in her kitchen” (Chicago Tribune). Lucky readers in the 1970s and ’80s discovered Laurie Colwin’s urbane, witty fiction in The New Yorker, as well as her warm, engaging food writing in Gourmet magazine columns. More Home Cooking, the second collection of these columns, is an expression of Colwin’s lifelong passion for cuisine and offers a delightful mix of recipes, advice, and personal anecdotes from the kitchen and beyond. She muses over the many charms and challenges of cooking at home in timeless essays including “Desserts That Quiver,” “Real Food for Tots,” and “Catering on One Dollar a Head.” As informative as it is entertaining, and filled with Colwin’s trademark down-to-earth charm and wit, More Home Cooking is a rare treat for anyone who spends time in the kitchen and feels “like having a great conversation with someone that you love” (Samantha Bee).

Authored by a famed novelist -- an elegantly written treasury of culinary memories, recipes, tips and stories that is as pleasurable to read as it is to cook from.

Lord Theodore Harrow has watched three of his closest friends fall in love and suffer for it, but now they are content, and he is left on the outside. When an accident brings him face-to-face with the woman of his dreams, he hopes his single days will be over, without the drama. Mrs. Valeria Wilson is not looking for another husband to replace the one she buried with great relief. Now, while trying to hide from her evil father-in-law and protect her young son, The last thing she needs is a peer of the realm pursuing her. When his friends get involved, life turns upside down for Valeria. Can Valeria keep her heart safe and her secret preserved while taking advantage of some of the help these people have to offer her in her desperate straits? Fighting her ex-father-in-law puts them all in a direct battle with the Black Diamond himself— not only for their lives, but the future of Britain.

A collection of six different short stories. Each dealing with different characters of varying ages in different situations.