Rachel Pastan: 3 books

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...

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,...

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,...