Ann Patchett

OK
About Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett is the author of six novels, including Bel Canto, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction. She writes for the New York Times Magazine, Elle, GQ, the Financial Times, the Paris Review and Vogue. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Customers Also Bought Items By
Author updates
Books By Ann Patchett
'Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature' Guardian
Longlisted for the Women's Prize 2020
A STORY OF TWO SIBLINGS, THEIR CHILDHOOD HOME, AND A PAST THAT THEY CAN'T LET GO.
Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns. We pretended that what we had lost was the house, not our mother, not our father. We pretended that what we had lost had been taken from us by the person who still lived inside.
Danny Conroy grows up in the Dutch House, a lavish mansion. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her wit, her brilliance. The siblings grow and change as life plays out under the watchful eyes of the house's former owners, in the frames of their oil paintings.
Then one day their father brings Andrea home. Though they cannot know it, her arrival to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve's lives…
'The best book I've read in years' Rosamund Lupton
'Her finest novel yet' Sunday Times
'The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something' John Boyne
'A masterpiece' Cathy Rentzenbrink
'Bliss' Nigella Lawson
'A heartfelt and witty collection of essays on everything from marriage and knitting to the inevitability of death' Guardian
'A pitch-perfect collection ... She can turn a sentence like no one else: her writing is clear, honest, witty, and just full of unsentimental humanity' Nigella Lawson
'Profound and clever and funny and wise' Meg Mason, author of Sorrow & Bliss
______________________
An irresistible collection of essays and memoir from the internationally bestselling, Women's Prize-winning author of The Dutch House
'Any story that starts will also end.' As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this as she explores family, friendship, marriage, failure, success, and what it all means.
Ranging from the personal – her portrait of the three men she called her fathers; how a chance encounter with Tom Hanks led to one of the most important friendships of her life; how to answer when someone asks why you don't have children – to the sublime – the unexpected influence of Snoopy; the importance of knitting; the pleasure to be found in children's books – each essay transforms the particular into the universal, letting us all see our own worlds anew.
Illuminating, penetrating, funny and generous, These Precious Days is joyful time spent in the company of one of our greatest living authors.
'Patchett's essays are both sharp and humane ... like a hugely enjoyable conversation with a particularly brilliant friend' Sadie Jones
Winner of The Women’s Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
The poignant – and at times very funny – novel from the author of The Dutch House and Commonwealth.
Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honour of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerised the international guests with her singing.
It is a perfect evening – until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.
There were people on the banks of the river.
Among the tangled waterways and giant anacondas of the Brazilian Rio Negro, an enigmatic scientist is developing a drug that could alter the lives of women for ever. Dr Annick Swenson's work is shrouded in mystery; she refuses to report on her progress, especially to her investors, whose patience is fast running out. Anders Eckman, a mild-mannered lab researcher, is sent to investigate.
A curt letter reporting his untimely death is all that returns.
Now Marina Singh, Anders' colleague and once a student of the mighty Dr Swenson, is their last hope. Compelled by the pleas of Anders's wife, Marina leaves the snowy plains of Minnesota and retraces her friend's steps into the heart of the South American darkness, determined to track down Dr. Swenson and uncover the secrets being jealously guarded among the remotest tribes of the rainforest.
What Marina does not yet know is that, in this ancient corner of the jungle, where the muddy waters and susurrating grasses hide countless unknown perils and temptations, she will face challenges beyond her wildest imagination.
Marina is no longer the student, but only time will tell if she has learnt enough.
________________________________
'The best book I have read all year. It made me laugh and weep and left me in a state of wonder: perfect from first page to last ... a masterpiece' EMMA DONOGHUE
'A triumph ... Pachett's best book yet' GUARDIAN
'Patchett blends wisdom and humanity jointly with the icy forensic gaze of someone not afraid to expose the frailties of human behaviour ... Read it' Jojo Moyes
'An outstanding novel ... a master of her art' Observer
It is 1964: Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited and notices a heart stoppingly beautiful woman. When he kisses Beverly Keating, his host's wife, he sets in motion the joining of two families, whose shared fate will be defined on a day seven years later.
In 1988, Franny Keating, now twenty-four, is working as a cocktail waitress in Chicago. When she meets the famous author Leon Posen one night at the bar, and tells him about her family, she unwittingly relinquishes control over their story…
Shortlisted for The Women’s Prize for Fiction.
From the bestselling author of The Dutch House, Commonwealth and Bel Canto, Winner of The Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Pen/Faulkner Award.
Sabine – twenty years a magician's assistant to her handsome, charming husband – is suddenly a widow.
In the wake of his death, she finds he has left a final trick; a false identity and a family allegedly lost in a tragic accident but now revealed as very much alive and well.
Named as heirs in his will, they enter Sabine's life and set her on an adventure of unravelling his secrets, from sunny Los Angeles to the windswept plains of Nebraska, that will work its own sort of magic on her.
The first novel from the bestselling author of The Dutch House, Commonwealth and Bel Canto, Winner of The Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Pen/Faulkner Award.
It is 1968. Rose Clinton arrives at St Elizabeth’s, a Roman Catholic home for unwed mothers in Habit, Kentucky. Rose has fled her dull but loving husband without telling him she is pregnant and has decided to be ‘a liar for the rest of my life’. As penance, she has also abandoned her widowed and much loved mother, with no mention of her condition.
Rose plans to give her baby up because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs. But St. Elizabeth’s is home to a healing spring, and when Rose's time draws near, she realises that she cannot go through with her plans. Nor can she remain untouched by those she has left behind; by the ever-watchful Sister Evangeline; by the love of Son, the handyman at St. Elizabeth; or later by the birth of her daughter Cecilia.
Enchantingly graceful, Ann Patchett’s first novel is about sanctuary and pilgrimage, pain and healing and the helping hand of chance.
'A spectacular read' Sunday Express
'An award-winning writer at the top of her game' Telegraph
A moving story of overlapping lives from the Orange Prize-winning author of Bel Canto
Tip and Teddy are becoming men under the very eyes of their adoptive father, Bernard Doyle. A student at Harvard, Tip is happiest in a lab, whilst Teddy thinks he has found his calling in the Church, and both are increasingly strained by their father's protective plans for them.
But when they are involved in an accident on an icy road, the Doyles are forced to confront certain truths about their lives, how the death of Doyle's wife Bernadette has affected the family, and an anonymous figure who is always watching...
From the bestselling author of The Dutch House, Commonwealth and Bel Canto, Winner of The Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Pen/Faulkner Award.
John Nickel is a black ex-jazz musician who only wants to be a good father. When his son is taken away to Miami by his mother, Nickel is left with nothing but Muddy’s, the Memphis blues bar that he manages. Then he hires Fay Taft, a young white waitress from east Tennessee who has a volatile brother, Carl, in tow. They spell nothing but trouble for Nickel. Fay stirs up both romantic and paternal impulses in him and Carl is clearly a no-good.
But Nickel finds himself consumed with the idea of Taft, Fay and Carl’s dead father, and begins to reconstruct the life of a man he never met but whose place he has taken.
'Electrically entertaining ... Funny, generous, spirited and kind' The Times
This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is an irresistible blend of literature and memoir revealing the big experiences and little moments that shaped Ann Patchett as a daughter, wife, friend and writer.
Here, Ann Patchett shares entertaining and moving stories about her tumultuous childhood, her painful early divorce, the excitement of selling her first book, driving a Winnebago from Montana to Yellowstone Park, her joyous discovery of opera, scaling a six-foot wall in order to join the Los Angeles Police Department, the gradual loss of her beloved grandmother, starting her own bookshop in Nashville, her love for her very special dog and, of course, her eventual happy marriage.
This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a memoir both wide ranging and deeply personal, overflowing with close observation and emotional wisdom, told with wit, honesty and irresistible warmth.
Sunday Times bestselling author Ann Patchett’s first work of nonfiction, chronicling her decades-long friendship with the critically acclaimed author, Lucy Grealy.
When Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy met in college they began a friendship that would define their lives. Lucy Grealy lost part of her jaw to childhood cancer, and a large part of her life to chemotherapy and endless reconstructive surgeries. Stoic but vulnerable, damaged by bullying but fascinated by fame, Lucy had an incandescent personality that illuminated those around her.
In this tender, brutal book, Ann Patchett describes Lucy’s life and her own platonic love for her. Truth & Beauty is the story of the part of their lives that they shared – the camaraderie and comedy, the tribulations and tragedy of true friendship. A portrait of unwavering commitment through success, failure, despair and drugs, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined.
"She was a strong swimmer. Now, she can float, but her swimming days are over. And be honest, asking me if I put a swimming spell on a woman who drowned is 100% accusing me of killing her."
"So? Did you?"
Zoe paused for a moment before responding. "Massive bitch or not, her untimely demise sounds like an accident to me."
"And no chance you were in Geneva yesterday?"
Zoe smiled as she stood to leave the room. "Detective, I'm a witch. It really doesn't matter where I was when she drowned."
- ←Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- Next Page→