Anne Tyler Books in Order

Law student Ben Joe Hawkes rushes home to small-town North Carolina when news of his sister’s troubled marriage unsettles the family. Surrounded by his mother, grandmother, and sisters, he rethinks duty, love, and where his own future lies.

In rural tobacco country, the Pike family reels after the accidental death of six-year-old Janie Rose. Neighbors James and Ansel step in, and together they grope toward a new kind of everyday life after shattering loss.

Evie Decker, a shy, lonely teenager in a small Southern town, becomes fixated on local rock singer Drumstrings Casey. Their unlikely connection pulls her out of hiding, then forces both of them to confront the limits of love and reinvention.

Aimless twenty-something Elizabeth Abbott takes a handyman job for widowed Pamela Emerson in a crumbling Baltimore house. As years pass and adult Emerson children circle back home, Elizabeth becomes the family’s steady center—and must decide what life she wants.

Jeremy Pauling, a reclusive collage artist who has barely left his Baltimore row house, is forced into the world when his mother dies and a young mother, Mary Tell, moves in upstairs. Their uneasy closeness reshapes both of their lives.

Fortune-teller Justine Peck hits the road with her restless husband Duncan and her grandfather Daniel, who’s determined to find the brother who vanished decades earlier. Their wandering search gradually becomes a quest for identity, belonging, and ways to break old family patterns.

Charlotte Emory plans to slip quietly out of her small Maryland town and her preacher husband’s suffocating household. Instead she’s taken hostage by inept bank robber Jake Simms, and a botched getaway trip forces them into uneasy, life-changing companionship.

Edited by Ben Forkner and Patrick H. Samway, this anthology surveys twentieth-century Southern short fiction. Stories by writers including Anne Tyler, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, and others explore a changing region and its distinct literary traditions.

Morgan Gower, a bored Baltimore father who drifts through life in disguises and make-believe roles, stumbles into the orbit of young couple Emily and Leon. His fascination with their household upends all three lives in surprising, bittersweet ways.

Edited by Janet Sternburg, this collection brings together essays in which seventeen women writers reflect on their working lives. Contributors including Anne Tyler, Alice Walker, and Joan Didion consider the environments, commitments, and creative impulses that shape their writing.

Abandoned by their traveling father, Cody, Ezra, and Jenny Tull grow up under the fierce love of their mother, Pearl. As adults they circle one another warily, returning again and again to Ezra’s restaurant in hopes of a peaceful family meal.

Compiled by Sybil Marcus, this teaching anthology presents twenty unabridged short stories by writers from Kate Chopin to Anne Tyler. The selections are accompanied by language and literary-analysis activities designed to build reading, discussion, vocabulary, and writing skills.

Guest editor Anne Tyler and series editor Shannon Ravenel select nineteen short stories previously published in U.S. and Canadian magazines. The annual anthology ranges across domestic life, relationships, and other contemporary concerns in work by writers including Raymond Carver and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Macon Leary writes travel guides for people who hate surprises, yet his own life has been derailed by his son’s death and a crumbling marriage. When brash dog trainer Muriel barges in, Macon is forced to choose between safety and risky new happiness.

Over the course of a single day’s drive to a funeral and back, Maggie and Ira Moran revisit three decades of marriage, parenthood, and half-buried dreams. Their bickering, loyalty, and stubborn hope reveal how ordinary unions survive and change.

Selected by New Woman magazine, this anthology brings together short fiction from a range of established writers, including contributors such as Anne Tyler, Louise Erdrich, and Penny Vincenzi. The collection presents varied standalone stories rather than a single connected narrative.

Seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe’s careless accusation helps trigger a family tragedy. Crushed by guilt, he abandons college to raise his brother’s children and joins an unconventional storefront church, slowly learning what forgiveness and long-term responsibility really cost.

Princess Molly’s cluttered tower room horrifies her neat parents, who rule a spotless kingdom. When a sudden flood drives the royal family upstairs, Molly’s piles of food, clothes, and books turn her supposed mess into their unexpected refuge.

During a beach vacation, dutiful wife and mother Delia Grinstead quietly walks away from her family and keeps going. In a scruffy Maryland town she starts over from scratch, testing how far reinvention can go and what ties she’s willing to break.

Edited by Paula J. Carlson and Peter S. Hawkins, this reader pairs contemporary literary selections with author profiles and reflection questions. Volume 2 uses fiction and other writing by authors including Anne Tyler, John Updike, and Tobias Wolff to explore faith, spirituality, and religious experience.

Barnaby Gaitlin, former teenage burglar and current odd-job man for the elderly, is the family disappointment in a rich Baltimore clan. As he falls for efficient, well-mannered Sophia, he must decide what kind of goodness—and future—he can honestly live up to.

At fifty-three, party planner Rebecca Davitch suddenly wonders if she has become the wrong person. Surrounded by her boisterous extended family in a Baltimore row house, she revisits the scholarly life and first love she left behind to see what, if anything, she truly missed.

Reserved grocer Michael Anton and impulsive Pauline Barclay rush into marriage during World War II. Over decades—and through a runaway daughter, suburban moves, and late-life regrets—their union reveals how even loving couples can feel like lifelong amateurs at marriage.

Timothy Tugbottom likes everything exactly the same: his cereal, his alphabet book, his cozy crib. When the grown-ups start pushing new foods and a big-boy bed, his loud no slowly gives way to the idea that change might feel pretty good.

At a Baltimore airport, the Iranian American Yazdans and the all-American Donaldsons meet as they welcome baby daughters arriving from Korea. Their intertwined lives, potluck traditions, and uneasy friendship explore belonging, cultural collision, and what it means to become an American family.

Recently downsized teacher Liam Pennywell moves to a bare new apartment and is attacked his first night there, waking with no memory of what happened. His search to fill that blank—helped by enigmatic Eunice—nudges him to question a lifetime of drifting.

After a freak accident kills his abrupt, practical wife Dorothy, widowed editor Aaron Woolcott finds himself literally seeing her everywhere. Their wry, tender conversations help him relive their imperfect marriage and inch toward a new way of saying goodbye.

The Whitshanks have always told the same family stories about their beloved Baltimore house and its porch. As aging parents Abby and Red falter and grown children argue over caregiving, long-kept secrets and shifting loyalties reshape what home really means to them.

Kate Battista is stuck running her eccentric scientist father’s household and wrangling preschoolers who don’t follow the rules. When her father schemes for her to marry his charming lab assistant to save his visa, Kate must decide whose future she’s protecting.

Willa Drake has spent a lifetime smoothing other people’s tempers and choosing the safe path. A misdialed phone call about a wounded young mother in Baltimore jolts her into flying across the country—and into a messy neighborhood that offers an unexpected second chance.

From childhood, Susanna can sometimes ease people’s pain with a touch, though her power fails as often as it works. As demand for her semi-miracles grows, she struggles to build an ordinary life while shouldering others’ desperate hopes.

Micah Mortimer lives by strict routines, splitting his days between fixing neighbors’ computers and tending his tiny basement apartment. When his girlfriend faces eviction and a college student appears claiming Micah might be his father, his carefully organized life starts to crack open.

Daisy Coble, worried about her sullen teenage son Donny, hires an unconventional tutor to turn him around. As the boy drifts further from school and home, her anxious good intentions collide with the limits of what any parent can control.

Beginning with a 1950s lake vacation and stretching forward more than sixty years, the Garrett family drifts apart and knots back together in quiet ways. Parents Mercy and Robin, and children Alice, Lily, and David embody how family ties leave permanent, complicated impressions.

Over one Baltimore wedding weekend, prickly school administrator Gail Baines loses her job, hosts her easygoing ex-husband, and faces a bombshell about her daughter’s fiancé. Three unsettled days force Gail to revisit her marriage, her mistakes, and what kind of future she still wants.