“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 ...

Anne Tyler loves the everyday. With her 20th novel (20th!!!!), A Spool of Blue Thread, Tyler continues to sew together stories about the mundane and turn them into something approaching the magical.

This article contains affiliate links. We may earn a small commission on items purchased through this article, but that does not affect our editorial judgement. THAT’s the leafy Baltimore suburb where ...

My mom’s mother, my Grandma Green, always shopped at the corner A&P in her town of Rensselaer, where we often visited her during my youth. And our town of North Judson had its own A&P store, where my ...

– Old wooden thread spool (at least 1 in wide) – Drill – Large drill bit – Smaller drill bit – Utility knife or other sharp knife – Pencil – Table vice or clamp (optional) – Earbuds Clamp spool in a ...

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 ...