Susan Richards Shreve Books in Order

After her husband's death, Susanna tries to manage grief, motherhood, and a job teaching creative writing. Her frantic efforts to keep moving leave little room for her young son as emotional exhaustion threatens her fragile independence.

Emily grows up amid the unhappiness of her parents' marriage after her father returns from World War II. As an actress and single mother, she struggles to escape that childhood's influence on her own relationships.

Twelve-year-old Elizabeth DuBois leads a neighborhood group called the Nightmares. When a mysterious woman living across the street attracts their attention, Elizabeth sets out to investigate Tess Janario and the secrets surrounding her life.

In Washington in 1954, seventeen-year-old Natty Taylor's father holds a powerful government position. Her involvement with the disgraced Joseph McCarthy and a student campaign against her father draws her into conflicts between family loyalty and politics.

Ten-year-old Sammy narrates five stories about troubling events within his family and circle of friends. A dog's death, suicide, aging, dishonesty, and divorce force him to confront problems that adults cannot easily explain away.

Four children must shoulder unfamiliar responsibilities when their father is jailed for embezzlement and their mother suffers a breakdown. The family's upheaval forces them to navigate changed roles while coping with the collapse of their parents' stability.

Kate finds life in a home for unmarried mothers restrictive and frustrating. Returning home brings another difficulty: a childhood friend, now struggling with mental illness, directs unwanted attention toward her as she tries to move forward.

The Howells family of Pennsylvania confronts illness, changing relationships, and historical upheaval across generations. Their closely guarded family identity and powerful emotional bonds complicate the lives of children trying to establish independence from the clan's expectations.

Fourth-grader Lotty seems to do everything right, but being the good girl comes with unexpected problems. When classmates organize a club against her, she must confront the resentment that her apparently perfect behavior has stirred.

Mary Leary runs away from her conservative Catholic family and enters the orbit of liberal university professor Sally Page. Their encounter challenges Mary's assumptions as she struggles to find an identity beyond the life she has rejected.

Joshua has to repeat third grade while his former classmates move ahead. Humiliated and vulnerable to teasing, he struggles with school and his own confidence, with a teacher offering help as he faces another difficult year.

Fourth-grader Miranda starts a club to help children who come home to empty houses. Making the project work means competing with a rival leader and finding the publicity and community support her ambitious plan needs.

Jamie Waters wants a spiritual life that reaches beyond comfortable conventions. His ambition to become a priest brings him into conflict with Episcopal rules and the expectations surrounding him as he pursues a demanding personal calling.

Francesca Woodbine studies singing and inherits her Sicilian grandmother's gift of second sight. On the Massachusetts coast, her relationships with Colin and Will Weaver draw her into a world of attraction, betrayal, and disturbing family secrets.

Feeling overlooked between her siblings, third-grader Lily runs away with her infant sister, Muffin. Their journey by train becomes frightening when the baby is abducted, turning Lily's bid for attention into a desperate search.

Eleven-year-old friends Lucy and Rosie set up a pretend psychiatric practice inspired by Lucy's father's work. Their attempts to help an abused girl take them beyond make-believe and into a situation that could put them in danger.

During World War II, Charley Fletcher moves his family to a Virginia farm, hoping to create a harmonious community with the Black Bellows family. Their different histories and experiences expose tensions beneath his idealistic vision.

Self-conscious seventh-grader Eliza gives up her own plans to audition for a musical. Helping Lucy, a deaf classmate, prepare for a leading role draws her back toward performing while challenging her doubts about herself.

Beginning with Welsh immigrant Anna Jermyn's arrival in Washington, this novel follows four generations of women. Their ambitions for work, independence, and self-expression collide with family obligations and the changing opportunities offered by American life.

Molly feels left behind as her older siblings grow away from home and her friendships change. Starting fifth grade with familiar friends in other classes makes belonging harder, especially when a new girl enters the picture.

Eleven-year-old Amy's life is crowded with lessons, sports, and her mother's expectations. When she skips school to avoid a Halloween parade, the discovery of her absence brings their strained relationship and her hidden unhappiness into focus.

Joshua knows what it feels like to be bullied by Tommy Wilhelm. When a new student becomes Tommy's target, Joshua must decide whether to help him, risking the same harassment he has struggled to escape.

Opera singer Annie Blakemore encounters Will Huston on the Washington subway while struggling with an abusive marriage. The Irish actor's private mission and her longing for escape bring two troubled lives together over three days.

Lucy is delighted when her parents adopt an abandoned baby, giving her the sibling she has wanted. When the child is kidnapped, Lucy and her friend Rosie become entangled in a dangerous effort to recover her.

Edited by Marita Golden and Susan Richards Shreve, this collection brings together writing by Black and white women about race. Essays, stories, and drama examine identity, friendship, motherhood, and the tensions shaping relationships across racial differences.

Liam's parents are divorcing, and the fourth-grader believes he may be responsible. As he withdraws from friends and baseball, visits from his father at school complicate his attempts to cope with a family that feels broken.

Zoe and Columbo have always thought of themselves as twins, despite their different beginnings. As their ninth birthday approaches in a new town, Columbo's wish to conceal his adoption strains the closeness the siblings once shared.

Since her mother's death, ten-year-old Julie has worked hard to hold her family together. Her father's new relationship becomes especially difficult when the woman he dates is the mother of Julie's rival on the soccer field.

Pediatrician Helen Fielding returns to Meridian, Ohio, where her baby disappeared years earlier. As children fall ill and more disappearances occur, her work draws her into the town's suspicions and the unresolved pain of her past.

Jilsy develops warts just before she starts third grade. Her family's assurances that they will disappear do little to calm her fears, and she worries that the unwanted change will spoil her entire school year.

After repeating part of third grade, Joshua finally advances to fourth, where Tommy Wilhelm remains a problem. Trying to appear cool leads Joshua toward cigarettes and a knife, creating troubles that threaten his progress at school.

Susan Richards Shreve and Porter Shreve edit eighteen personal narratives exploring justice in America. Contributors consider the distance between legal rules and lived experience, asking what fairness means when individual circumstances resist the law's clear categories.

Edited by Susan Richards Shreve and Porter Shreve, these personal essays examine what progress means in human lives. Contributors explore subjects including cultural identity, psychological treatment, and responses to suffering, questioning familiar assumptions about improvement.

Eleven-year-old Jonah copes with poverty, family upheaval, and teasing about his weight by retreating into food and fantasy. His dream of appearing on a children's television talk show offers an escape from his difficult daily life.

Starting junior high leaves Amanda isolated from her old friends. A rebellious new appearance and the appeal of a different social group promise belonging, but an invitation to join a club comes with pressure to steal.

Orphaned by a bombing on an Italian train, four siblings grow up under their eldest brother Sam's protective care. Their later comedy troupe turns family trauma into performance, while Sam struggles with continuing fears about their safety.

After a family tragedy, ten-year-old Alyssa Reed moves with her depressed mother while her father lives separately. Facing a new school and a fractured home, the girl nicknamed Blister tries to find her footing amid painful changes.

Peter's wandering family settles in Boston, but sixth grade and his mother's return to law school leave him feeling displaced. When beloved cats die or disappear, their ghostly presence adds another uncertainty to his unsettled life.

Susan Richards Shreve and Porter Shreve gather contemporary writers' recollections of their student years. These personal accounts explore the relationships, discoveries, and difficult experiences of schooling, revealing how time in classrooms helps shape later lives.

Fifth-grader Ben is used to getting into trouble, but new student Trout makes him look restrained. Their friendship brings companionship and fresh complications as two boys with attention difficulties struggle against the expectations adults attach to their reputations.

This anthology gathers writers' memories of childhood across different American communities and eras. Accounts of family, migration, defiance, and belonging reveal how personal experiences intersect with the country's changing social landscape and remain vivid in adult memory.

Twelve-year-old Ellie is drawn to her older new neighbor Tommy and the camp he creates beneath the Watsons' porch. His questionable behavior and a diamond necklace test her judgment, especially when her parents try to keep them apart.

After her politically outspoken brother is murdered outside a Washington college library, Claire Frayn's family struggles with grief. A stranger claiming to know the killer draws her into correspondence with a suspect and plans that blur justice, revenge, and desire.

Thirteen-year-old Blister Reed struggles to understand the changing expectations of boys and friendship. When Jonah's pursuit of popularity gets him into trouble, helping him becomes complicated by his wish for a romance she does not share.

Shreve recalls childhood stays at Georgia's Warm Springs polio rehabilitation center, beginning at eleven. Separation from her protective mother, friendships, mischief, and first love shape a memoir of growing independence amid treatment and the fears surrounding the disease.

Franny feels painfully conspicuous because her foot requires orthopedic shoes, and her mother's flamboyance adds to her embarrassment. After a disastrous school dance, a journey to Italy and a meeting with shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo offer new possibilities.

Lucy Painter returns to Washington with her children, leaving their married father behind in New York. Her concealed history and a neighbor's attachment to her daughter complicate their new life, exposing tensions between private secrets and the desire to belong.

Jess is watching baby Ruby in a hotel while the family celebrates a wedding downstairs. When the baby disappears during a brief distraction, Jess and her sister Teddy search for answers amid guilt, suspicion, and an unfamiliar hotel's possibilities.

A letter sends seventy-year-old Georgianna Grove back toward the Wisconsin lake where her mother was murdered decades earlier. Traveling with family, she revisits her father's confession and troubling memories that may challenge the story she has always accepted.