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Lisa Grunwald

Biography

Lisa Grunwald

Lisa Grunwald is the author of the novels THE IRRESISTIBLE HENRY HOUSE, WHATEVER MAKES YOU HAPPY, NEW YEAR'S EVE, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING and SUMMER. Along with her husband, Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler, she edited the anthologies THE MARRIAGE BOOK, WOMEN'S LETTERS and LETTERS OF THE CENTURY. Grunwald is a former contributing editor to Life and former features editor of Esquire. She lives in New York City.

Books by Lisa Grunwald

by Lisa Grunwald - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Annabel Hayes --- born, baptized, and orphaned in the sleepy conservative town of Dayton, Tennessee --- is thrilled to find herself falling quickly and deeply in love with George Craig, a sophisticated attorney newly arrived from Knoxville. But before the end of their first year of marriage, their lives are beset by losses. The strain on their relationship is only intensified when John T. Scopes is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution at the local high school. William Jennings Bryan --- a revered Southern politician --- joins the prosecution, pitting himself and his faith against the renowned defense attorney Clarence Darrow. But in the midst of these conflicts—one waged in an open courtroom, the other behind closed doors --- Annabel will discover that the path to her own evolution begins with the courage to think for herself.

by Lisa Grunwald - Fiction, Historical Fiction

On a clear December morning in 1937, at the famous gold clock in Grand Central Terminal, Joe Reynolds, a hardworking railroad man from Queens, meets a vibrant young woman who seems mysteriously out of place. Nora Lansing is a Manhattan socialite and an aspiring artist whose flapper clothing, pearl earrings and talk of the Roaring Twenties don’t seem to match the bleak mood of Depression-era New York. Captivated by Nora from her first electric touch, Joe despairs when he tries to walk her home and she disappears. Finding her again --- and again --- will become the focus of his love and his life.

by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler

Historical events of the last three centuries come alive through these women’s singular correspondences --- often their only form of public expression. First Lady Dolley Madison tells her sister about rescuing George Washington’s portrait during the War of 1812; one week after JFK’s assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy pens a heartfelt letter to Nikita Khrushchev. The letters gathered here also offer fresh insight into the personal milestones in women’s lives. Marilyn Monroe asking her doctor to spare her ovaries in a handwritten note she taped to her stomach before appendix surgery; an eighteen-year-old telling her mother about her decision to have an abortion the year after Roe v. Wade; and a woman writing to her parents and in-laws about adopting a Chinese baby.