“The trouble with dying,” a mother says in Anne Tyler’s new novel, “is that you don’t get to see how everything turns out. You won’t know the ending.” “But, Mom,” replies her daughter, “there is no ...

Over the course of 20 novels, Anne Tyler’s artistry has become so assured and invisible that her books often read less like fiction than dispatches from the real world. In such midcareer masterpieces ...

Anne Tyler’s “A Spool of Blue Thread,” the 20th novel by the Pultizer Prize-winning author, is loaded with ideas and potentially fascinating storylines that are extended throughout the book but ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

Anne Tyler is back in Baltimore, among the middle-class families that have been her domain for five decades. A Spool of Blue Thread, her 20th novel, is not her best, but it features some characters ...

The characters in "A Spool of Blue Thread" look like the same Baltimore family members we've socialized with for 50 years in Anne Tyler's fiction. In fact, everything about her new novel — from its ...