Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years, A Spool of Blue Thread, Redhead by the Side of the Road and Three Days in June. She has won the Pulitzer Prize and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction and was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English'.

"Excellently done; the minutiae of domestic landscapes, the lunatic irrationality of family quarrels, the torments of sibling rivalry" Sunday Telegraph "Funny, heart-hammering, wise...superb entertainment" New York Times Book Review "A terrific writer... She's changed my perception on life" -- Anna Chancellor "A classic of contemporary Americana... variously funny and horrifying and finally, quietly, terribly moving" Los Angeles Times "A book that should join those few that every literate person will have to read" Boston Globe