At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than
Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter's numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him. Ann, his mother, who runs a women's retreat centre she founded after leaving his father, is wounded by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built. She long ago banished from her mind the decision that divided her from her son. But as Peter’s case plunges him further into the fraught memory of his first love and the night of violence that changed his life forever, he and his mother must confront the secret that tore them apart.
 
With unsurpassed emotional depth,  Mothers and Sons  reveals all that is lost by looking away from the past and the love that might be restored by facing it. In his spellbinding new novel, Adam Haslett demonstrates yet again his mastery of “a rich assortment of literary gifts” (New York Times).

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist "You Are Not A Stranger Here," a stunning, masterful portrait of our modern gilded age.
At the heart of "Union Atlantic" lies a test of wills between a retired history teacher, Charlotte Graves--who has suddenly begun to hear her two dogs speaking to her in the voices of Cotton Mather and Malcolm X--and an ambitious young banker, Doug Fanning, who is building an ostentatious mansion on what was once Charlotte's family land. Drawn into the conflict is Nate Fuller, a troubled high-school student who stirs powerful emotions in both of them. What emerges is a riveting story of financial power, the defense of tradition, and the distortions of desire these forces create. With remarkable scope and precision, "Union Atlantic" delivers a striking vision of the violent, anxious world we've come to inhabit.

Shortlisted for the NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2017 2017 PULITZER PRIZE Finalist for Fiction TIME Top Ten Novels of 2016 'It might be the best American novel about a middle-class family since Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections' Independent 'Exceptional, haunting, distinctive... [It] resembles the work of Anne Tyler, intertwining grief and love... Intimate and panoramic' The Sunday Times 'Dreadfully sad and hilariously funny. Literature of the highest order' Peter Carey Universal and essential, the heart-breaking story of an ordinary American family shaped by tragedy Michael's father walked into the woods one day, and out of his family's life for ever. Yet he and his brother and sister see it less as a tragedy in their past and more as a forewarning of the future. For Michael - smart, brilliant, so alive and vital - feels the darkness that drew their father away and how, given the chance, it might take the whole family. He wants to save them - but can he save himself?