«Hailed as a masterpiece from the moment of its first publication, «Revolutionary Road» is the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple whose empty suburban life is held together by the dream that greatness is only just round the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their hopes and ideals, betraying in the end not only each other, but their own best selves.»

All the sorrows of Evan Shepard's loutish adolescence were redeemed at seventeen, in 1935, when he fell in love with automobiles... In the small suburban town of Cold Spring Harbor, Evan Shephard and his young bride Rachel yearn to escape the mistakes of their parents. But as they discover, families exert a hold as tight as fate, and every way out only ends up back home.

John Wilder is in his mid-thirties, a successful salesman with a place in the country, an adoring wife and a ten-year-old son. But something is wrong. His family no longer interests him, his infidelities are leading him nowhere and he has begun to drink too much. Then one night, something inside John snaps and he calls his wife to tell her that he isn't coming home.

«With his second collection of short stories, Richard Yates continues to extend his range as a writer of stunning power and eloquence. «Liars in Love» is concerned with troubled relations and the elusive nature of truth: Hope, dread, disorder, and a nervous entangling of separate lives in Greenwich Village during the Depression, as seen by a child, in 'Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired'. The volatile, perilous course of events set in motion when two divorced mothers agree to “pool their resources” and live together, with their children in 'Trying Out for the Race'. A young American soldier’s too-abrupt postwar reunion, on foreign soil, with the lovely, dismayingly grown-up sister he hasn’t seen since he was eleven and she was ten, in 'A Compassionate Leave'. The seven stories in this collection showcase Yates's extraordinary gift for observation and description. The last and longest of them, a rich, lucid, and compelling piece called 'Saying Goodbye to Sally', achieves a fitting conclusion for the book – and a resonant final statement of its theme.»

«Robert Prentice is eighteen, and his boyhood dreams have disintegrated on the battlefields of Europe. At home, his mother, Alice, wraps herself in fantasy against the relentless disappointments of life. From his compelling portraits of these two damaged souls, Richard Yates creates a brilliant novel of post-war America, at odds with its own identity, striving to combine prosperity and ideals, mercilessly exposed in the attempt to do so. At once tender and ironic, bitterly sad and achingly funny, «A Special Providence» is the second novel by the author of «Revolutionary Road».»