In an insightful and original meditation on the writer's craft that is by turns descriptive and prescriptive, Delbanco explores how literary virtuosity is achieved, how the writing of fiction can be taught, and the way literature functions for writer and reader equally. The book includes a novella called "The Lost Suitcase," revolving around a famous anecdote about Hemingway's early work and how it came to be lost.

The collected early novels of an American master. Now finally collected into a single volume, the Sherbrookes trilogy—Possession, Sherbrookes, and Stillness—is Nicholas Delbanco’s most celebrated achievement. Centering upon one New England clan and their estate in southwestern Vermont—a full thousand acres, including the bleak and chilly Big House, from which the volatile Sherbrookes have such trouble escaping—these books form a virtuoso portrait of the love, pride, resentment, and even madness we inherit from our families. Written in his characteristically opulent, bravura prose, Delbanco is here revealed as a Henry James for our time: a passionate cataloger of human strength and frailty. Edited and revised by the author some thirty years after its first publication, the trilogy—“made new” as the single-volume Sherbrookes—can now be rediscovered by a new generation of readers.

Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, was--as Nicholas Delbanco writes--"world famous in his lifetime," yet now he has been "almost wholly forgotten." Like Delbanco himself, Sally Ormsby Thompson Robinson--the narrator of this novel and the Count's fictional, last-surviving relative--is "haunted" by one of history's most fascinating and remarkable figures. On par with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Count Rumford was, among many other things, a politician, a spy, a philanthropist, and above all, a scientist. Based on countless historical documents, including letters and essays by Thompson himself, The Count of Concord brings to life the remarkable career of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford.

"The Years is about the passage of time: from youth to middle age to the winter of life. Forty years after their intense but doomed college romance, Lawrence and Hermia meet again on a Mediterranean cruise. They fall in love even more deeply, but being in their sixties, with plenty of baggage, they wonder if marriage is the right move. When Lawrence visits Hermia's home on Cape Cod, she has one request: "Please stay." What happens when he does fills the rest of this wise and unforgettable novel. With enormous sympathy and keen insight, Nicholas Delbanco follows Hermia and Lawrence through their years together and apart, in Los Angeles and New York, Michigan and Massachusetts, in frailness and in health. Old scores are settled; old wounds healed. A stunning, wise book about first and final love, The Years addresses the irrevocable end of life, and what ultimately endures."--Page 4 of cover.