A journalist and the bestselling author of Object Lessons, One True Thing, Black and Blue, Blessings, Rise and Shine, Every Last One, Still Life with Bread Crumbs, and Miller’s Valley, Quindlen’s books have appeared on fiction, nonfiction, and self-help bestseller lists alike. Indeed, her writings on a thoughtful life bear relation to her novels, which often turn the unexamined existence on its head.

Since earning the title of “America’s resident sane person” for her commentary in the New York Times, Quindlen’s books have established her as a master of the considered life.

Now her newest novel considers what home really means. When that place of familiarity becomes entirely unrecognizable, all associations become distorted: family, marriage, one’s very identity. This is the position Nora Nolan, the protagonist of Anna Quindlen’s new novel, Alternate Side, finds herself in one day.

A violent act shakes Nora’s idyllic New York City cul-de-sac. The place she’d come to think of as a safe harbor churns up an unwelcome moment of reckoning. Alternate Side, like many of Quindlen’s previous books, shows no hesitation when it comes to asking the big questions.