Beth Richardson Gutcheon

At a reception for the faculty and trustees to welcome Maggie Detweiler's team, no one seems keener for all to go well than Florence Meagher, a star teacher who is loved and respected in spite of her affliction - that she can never stop talking. Two days later, Florence's body is found in the campus swimming pool. Maggie obviously knows schools, but she also knows something about investigating murder. Print run 50,000.

In a small town called Dundee on the coast of Maine, an old woman named Hannah Gray begins her story: "Somebody said 'true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen. ' I've seen both and I don't know how to tell you which is worse." Hannah has decided, finally, to leave a record of the passionate and anguished long-ago summer in Dundee when she met Conary Crocker, the town bad boy and love of her life. This spare, piercing,...

Rue Shaw has everything--a much loved child, a solid marriage, and a job she loves. Saying Grace takes place in Rue's mid-life, when her daughter is leaving home, her parents are failing, her husband is restless and the school she has built is being buffeted by changes in society that affect us all. Funny, rich in detail and finally stunning, this novel presents a portrait of a tight-knit community in jeopardy, and of a charming woman whose most human...