June 5th, 2025
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Sunshine, secrets, and swoon-worthy stories—June's featured reads are your perfect summer escape.

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He doesn�t need a woman in his life; she knows he can�t live without her.


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A promise rekindled. A secret revealed. A second chance at the family they never had.


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A cowboy with a second chance. A waitress with a hidden gift. And a small town where love paints a brand-new beginning.


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She�s racing for a prize. He�s dodging romance. Together, they might just cross the finish line to love.


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She steals from the mob for justice. He�s the FBI agent who could take her down�or fall for her instead.


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He�s her only protection. She�s carrying his child. Together, they must outwit a killer before time runs out.


The Love Object by Edna O'Brien

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Also by Edna O'Brien:

The Love Object, May 2015
Hardcover / e-Book
Country Girl, May 2013
Hardcover / e-Book
Saints And Sinners, May 2011
Paperback
Byron in Love, June 2010
Paperback
The Lonely Girl, December 2002
Paperback (reprint)
The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue, May 1987
Paperback

The Love Object
Edna O'Brien

Little Brown and Company
May 2015
On Sale: May 5, 2015
536 pages
ISBN: 0316378267
EAN: 9780316378260
Kindle: B00NERQSD4
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction | Literature and Fiction

Collected here for the first time are stories spanning five decades of writing by the "short story master." (Harold Bloom)

As John Banville writes in his introduction to THE LOVE OBJECT, Edna O'Brien "is, simply, one of the finest writers of our time." The thirty-one stories collected in this volume provide, among other things, a cumulative portrait of Ireland, seen from within and without.

Coming of age, the impact of class, and familial and romantic love are the prevalent motifs, along with the instinct toward escape and subsequent nostalgia for home. Some of the stories are linked and some carry O'Brien's distinct sense of the comical. In "A Rose in the Heart of New York," the single-mindedness of love dramatically derails the relationship between a girl and her mother, while in "Sister Imelda" and "The Creature" the strong ties between teacher and student and mother and son are ultimately broken. "The Love Object" recounts a passionate affair between the narrator and her older lover.

The magnificent, mid-career title story from Lantern Slides portrays a Dublin dinner party that takes on the lives and loves of all the guests. More recent stories include "Shovel Kings"--"a masterpiece of compression, distilling the pain of a lost, exiled generation" (Sunday Times)--and "Old Wounds," which follows the revival and demise of the friendship between two elderly cousins.

In 2011, Edna O'Brien's gifts were acknowledged with the most prestigious international award for the story, the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award. THE LOVE OBJECT illustrates a career's worth of shimmering, potent prose from a writer of great courage, vision, and heart.

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