Rachel Pastan – författare

Jane Levitsky is a bright light in the field of nineteenth-century Russian literature, making her name as an expert on the novels of Grigory Karkov and the diaries of his wife, the long-suffering Masha Karkova. Jane is also wife to sweet, reasonable Billy and mother to lovable (if demanding) Maisie, roles she''s finding surprisingly challenging to juggle along with her ambitions. But when Jane uncovers evidence that Masha may have been more than muse and helpmeet to her famous husband, she seizes her ticket to academic superstardom. Little does she know that she has set in motion a chain of events that will come perilously close to unraveling both her marriage and her career. Lady of the Snakes will be instantly familiar—and instantly unforgettable—to anyone who has ever felt torn between two worlds.

In an inspired restaging of Daphne du Maurier’s classic Rebecca, a young curator finds herself haunted by the legacy of her predecessor.Two years have passed since the tragic death of Alena, curator at the Nauk, a cutting-edge art museum on Cape Cod. At the Venice Biennale, Bernard Augustin, the Nauk’s wealthy, enigmatic founder—to whom Alena had been closest confidante and muse—offers the position to an aspiring young curator from the Midwest. It’s the job of her dreams, and she dives at the chance.Just as quickly, she finds herself well out of her depth. The Nauk echoes with phantoms of the past—a past obsessively preserved by the museum’s staff—and the newcomer’s every move mires her more deeply in artistic, erotic, and emotional entanglements. When recently discovered evidence calls into question the circumstances of Alena’s death, shattering secrets surface, putting to the test the loyalty, integrity, and courage of our heroine—who remains nameless, like the heroine of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, the inspiration for this provocative and spellbinding tale.

Intelligent, crisp, ironic, and well-paced, This Side of Married brings to mind a pleasing cross of Jane Austen and Laurie Colwin. It is a sparkling domestic novel of romantic love and familial loyalties that is as heady as a glass of good champagne and as deliciously pleasurable as an authentic Sacher torte.   This Side of Married introduces the Rubin girls—three eligible sisters in an affluent family in a comfortable Philadelphia suburb, dominated by a strong-willed matriarch whose defining wish is to see each of them well-married. One daughter, Isabel, already is, although less than happily; a second, Alice, is about to tumble head over heels into a speedy engagement; the third and youngest, Tina, is blithely and resolutely single, though always dreaming of the perfect wedding to come. As various men enter from the wings, the daughters’ lives are thrown into unexpected upheaval—from Theo, Isabel’s lawyer husband, who is hardly the idealistic young man he once was; to Anthony Wolf, the promising cardiologist to whom Dr. Rubin, the girls’ mother, introduces Alice; to his friend, Simon Goldenstern, Anthony’s sardonic journalist friend who does everything in his power to protect the girls from the big bad wolf; to the unlikely cousin who turns up, Soren Zank, an environmentalist who made his first fortune in Silicon Valley, and who becomes the comic relief in this smartly observed and richly satisfying contemporary comedy of manners.

In 1923, having persuaded her resistant mother to send her to college, Kate Croft falls in love with science. Painfully rebuffed by a girl she longs for, and in flight from her own confusing sexuality, Kate finds refuge in the calm rationality of biology: its vision of a deeply interconnected world, and the promise that the new field of genetics can explain the way people are. But science, too, turns out to be marred by human weakness. Despite her hard work and extraordinary gifts, Kate struggles, facing discrimination, competition, and scientific theft. At the same time, a love affair is threatened by Kate’s obsession with figuring out the meaning of the puzzling changes she sees in her experiments. The novel explores what it takes to triumph in the ruthless world of mid-20th-century genetics, following Kate as she decides what she is—and is not—willing to sacrifice to succeed.

From the award-winning author of In the Field, an inquiry into grief, love, housing affordability, and the transformative power of art, in the story of a young theater director who, after her mother’s death, stages Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in her childhood home.Gwen Rivlin moves back home to Philadelphia in the wake of her mother’s death, and into the big, shabby house with a turret where they both grew up. Her friends tell her it’s too expensive for a 27-year-old theater director, and too suburban if she has any hopes of keeping her social life alive.Gwen is determined to stay, even when her schemes to make the house more affordable run afoul of the single-family zoning laws and earn the disapproval of her neighbors. To smooth things over, and to assuage her own grief, Gwen stages a production of The Cherry Orchard inside the turret house. She casts friends, coworkers from the local coffee shop, and various community members in Anton Chekhov’s play about a family struggling to hold onto its own real estate.Through the creation of this beautiful and transitory work of art, Gwen heals old breaches, reevaluates her relationship with her difficult mother, and weaves a new, non-traditional family for herself.