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In March 1999 Oprah Winfrey chose The Pilot’s Wife for her book club, and Anita Shreve’s novel about a woman who learns her husband’s secrets only after his plane goes down went on to sell more than three million copies. Shreve, born in Massachusetts in 1946, had taught high school and worked as a magazine editor in Nairobi before her first novel, Eden Close, appeared in 1989. She wrote her books longhand, set most of them on the coast and in the small towns of New England, and returned four times to a single beach house in New Hampshire. She published 18 novels before she died in 2018. This guide covers her twelve key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1991–2017 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Anita Shreve published 18 novels between 1989 and 2017. Her best known are The Pilot’s Wife (1998), an Oprah’s Book Club pick, The Weight of Water (1997), shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and Fortune’s Rocks (1999). Start with The Pilot’s Wife; it is also the way into the four novels set in the same New Hampshire house.
Where to Start with Anita Shreve
If you want the book that made her name
→ The Pilot’s Wife (1998) — the 1999 Oprah’s Book Club pick.
If you want a past crime and a present-day marriage
→ The Weight of Water (1997) — the 1873 Smuttynose murders.
If you want historical fiction
→ Fortune’s Rocks (1999) — the first story set in the house at Fortune’s Rocks.
If you want her last novel
→ The Stars Are Fire (2017) — the Maine fires of 1947.
12 Anita Shreve Books, in Order
Strange Fits of Passion
A woman named Maureen is in prison for killing her abusive husband, and a magazine reporter, Helen, has written about her life. The novel is assembled from the reporter’s notes and Maureen’s own letters, so the reader has to weigh two versions of the same story. Shreve first planned the subject as nonfiction and switched to fiction to write about it more openly.
Resistance
In German-occupied Belgium at the end of 1943, an American B-17 crash-lands near the village of Delahaut. A ten-year-old boy, Jean Benoit, finds the wounded pilot, Ted Brice, and takes him to Claire Daussois, whose husband works for the Resistance and who hides airmen in her attic. It was filmed in 2003 with Bill Paxton and Julia Ormond.
The Weight of Water
In 1995 a photographer, Jean, sails to Smuttynose Island, off the New Hampshire coast, to photograph the site where two Norwegian immigrant women were murdered in 1873; a third, Maren, survived by hiding. Maren’s account runs alongside Jean’s growing suspicion about her own husband. It won the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, was shortlisted for the 1998 Orange Prize, and was filmed by Kathryn Bigelow in 2000.
The Pilot’s Wife
Kathryn Lyons is woken by a knock at the door: her husband Jack’s plane has gone down off Malin Head, Ireland. While she and her daughter Mattie are besieged by the press, she finds out that Jack had been living a second life she knew nothing about. Oprah Winfrey picked it for her book club in March 1999, and CBS made it into a television film in 2002.
Fortune’s Rocks
In the summer of 1899 Olympia Biddeford, the young daughter of a wealthy Boston family, comes to her father’s house on the New Hampshire coast and falls into an affair with an older, married man, John Haskell. When she becomes pregnant, her father forces the relationship to end. It is the earliest story in the four novels set in the same house.
The Last Time They Met
Two poets, Linda Fallon and Thomas Janes, meet only three times in 35 years. The book runs backwards, in three parts named for Linda’s age: 52, at a literary festival in Toronto; 26, in Kenya, where she is in the Peace Corps and he is married; and 17, near Boston, where they first meet.
Sea Glass
In 1929 the newly married Honora and Sexton Beecher move into the run-down beach house at Fortune’s Rocks; he is a travelling typewriter salesman. As the stock market crashes, their lives cross with an 11-year-old mill worker, Alphonse, McDermott, a mill hand drawn into a union drive, and a rich socialite, Vivian.
Light on Snow
Twelve-year-old Nicky Dillon and her father, who moved to a New Hampshire farmhouse after a car crash killed her mother and baby sister, find a newborn abandoned in the snow. Days later a young woman, Charlotte, turns up at the house, and a blizzard keeps her there. Nicky tells the story as an adult looking back. It was Shreve’s best-selling paperback in the UK.
Body Surfing
Sydney, divorced and widowed by the age of 29, spends a summer at the beach house at Fortune’s Rocks, where the life she is rebuilding is upset when two brothers both pursue her. It is the fourth novel set in the house.
Testimony
At Avery Academy, a private school in Vermont, three basketball players and a 14-year-old girl are recorded on videotape after a night of drinking. The fallout is told in many first-person voices: the headmaster, a scholarship student named Silas, parents, teammates and police, some interviewed years later.
Stella Bain
In 1916 an American woman wakes in a military hospital in France with shell shock and no memory of who she is; she has been working as a nurse’s aide and ambulance driver. In London a surgeon, August Bridge, and his wife Lily take her in, and he uses talk and her drawings to help her recover her past. In the UK it was published as The Lives of Stella Bain.
The Stars Are Fire
In October 1947, after a summer of drought, fires sweep the Maine coast. Grace Holland, pregnant and with two small children, takes them and her friend Rosie into the sea while her husband Gene is away fighting the flames. With her home gone and Gene missing, she starts a different life. It was Shreve’s last novel; illness kept her from touring it.
In What Order to Read Anita Shreve
Most of Shreve’s novels stand alone, so you can read them in any order. The exception is the four books set in one house on the New Hampshire coast at Fortune’s Rocks: by the time of the story they run Fortune’s Rocks (1899), Sea Glass (1929), The Pilot’s Wife and Body Surfing. Each can be read on its own; reading them in story order lets you follow the house through a century.
Publication order shows a shift from contemporary novels about marriage and secrets in the 1990s towards historical settings, from the 1873 murders in The Weight of Water to the First World War in Stella Bain and the Maine fires in The Stars Are Fire.
A reading path
1. The Pilot’s Wife (1998)
2. The Weight of Water (1997)
3. Fortune’s Rocks (1999)
4. Testimony (2008)
5. The Stars Are Fire (2017)
Everything Else Anita Shreve Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 9 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other novels
6
6 books · 1989–2010
- 1989Eden Closeher first novel
- 1993Where or Whentwo married people revive a romance from their youth
- 2003All He Ever Wantednovel
- 2005A Wedding in Decembernovel
- 2009A Change in Altitudea couple’s climb of Mount Kenya
- 2010Rescuenovel
Short fiction and nonfiction
3
3 books · 1975–1989
- 1975Past the Island, Driftingshort story, O. Henry Prize
- 1987Remaking Motherhoodon working mothers
- 1989Women Together, Women Aloneon the consciousness-raising movement
The years · 1946–2018
Quick facts about Anita Shreve
- Known for
- Anita Shreve is known for novels about marriages and families overturned by a single event, many of them set on the New England coast, above all The Pilot’s Wife.
- 1946
- Born in Massachusetts; grows up in Dedham
- 1975
- Story wins an O. Henry Prize
- 1989
- First novel, Eden Close
- 1998
- The Pilot’s Wife
- 2018
- Dies in Newfields, New Hampshire
- Born
- 7 October 1946, Massachusetts; grew up in Dedham
- Died
- 29 March 2018, Newfields, New Hampshire, of cancer, aged 71
- Education
- Tufts University
- Before fiction
- High school teacher; deputy editor of Viva magazine in Nairobi, then freelance journalist
- Honours
- O. Henry Prize; L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award; Orange Prize shortlist (1998)
- Novels
- 18, from Eden Close (1989) to The Stars Are Fire (2017)
The red mark is 1998: The Pilot’s Wife, the Oprah’s Book Club pick that sold more than three million copies.
How Anita Shreve Writes: One Event, Many Consequences
Shreve’s novels usually turn on one sudden event and follow what it does to a marriage or a family: a plane crash in The Pilot’s Wife, a baby found in the snow in Light on Snow, a videotape in Testimony, a fire in The Stars Are Fire. Her publisher summed up her subject as the relationships between men and women and the ripple effects of a single dramatic moment.
She often builds a book from documents or several voices rather than one narrator. Strange Fits of Passion sets a reporter’s notes against a prisoner’s letters; The Weight of Water alternates a 19th-century confession with a present-day narrator; Testimony is told in statements and interviews; The Last Time They Met runs backwards. Her years as a journalist show in that habit of piecing a story together from sources.
Place does much of the work. Most of her books are set in coastal New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts or Vermont, and real history often supplies the frame: the Smuttynose murders of 1873, the crash of 1929, the Maine fires of 1947. Her central characters are mostly ordinary women under pressure; as she told The Writer in 2014, “It doesn’t interest me to write about women who aren’t real.”
Frequently asked questions about Anita Shreve’s books
How many books has Anita Shreve written?
Anita Shreve published 18 novels between 1989 and 2017 (some obituaries give 19), plus two books of nonfiction. Twelve key novels are on this page; the other six are listed under “Everything else”.
What are Anita Shreve’s books in order?
The key novels are Strange Fits of Passion (1991), Resistance (1995), The Weight of Water (1997), The Pilot’s Wife (1998), Fortune’s Rocks (1999), The Last Time They Met (2001), Sea Glass (2002), Light on Snow (2004), Body Surfing (2007), Testimony (2008), Stella Bain (2013) and The Stars Are Fire (2017). Her other novels are Eden Close (1989), Where or When (1993), All He Ever Wanted (2003), A Wedding in December (2005), A Change in Altitude (2009) and Rescue (2010).
Where should I start with Anita Shreve?
The Pilot’s Wife (1998): it is her best-known book, it shows her method of building a novel around one sudden event, and it leads into the other three novels set in the same house. If you prefer historical fiction, start with The Weight of Water or Fortune’s Rocks.
What is Anita Shreve’s most famous book?
The Pilot’s Wife. Oprah Winfrey chose it for her book club in March 1999, and it sold more than three million copies.
Which Anita Shreve books are set in the same house?
Four novels share a house on the New Hampshire coast at Fortune’s Rocks: Fortune’s Rocks (1899), Sea Glass (1929), The Pilot’s Wife and Body Surfing, the latter two set in the present. In The Pilot’s Wife the house has once been a convent. Each novel stands on its own.
Which Anita Shreve books have been made into films?
Three. The Weight of Water (2000) was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, with Sean Penn, Sarah Polley and Elizabeth Hurley; Resistance (2003) starred Bill Paxton and Julia Ormond; and The Pilot’s Wife became a CBS television film in 2002 with Christine Lahti and John Heard.
Is The Weight of Water based on a true story?
Partly. The historical half is based on the 1873 murders of two Norwegian immigrant women on Smuttynose Island, in the Isles of Shoals off New Hampshire. The present-day story of the photographer Jean is invented.
Did Anita Shreve win any prizes?
Her early story “Past the Island, Drifting” won an O. Henry Prize. The Weight of Water won the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award and was shortlisted for the 1998 Orange Prize.
Is Anita Shreve still alive?
No. She died of cancer on 29 March 2018 at her home in Newfields, New Hampshire, aged 71. She had announced her illness on Facebook the year before, when it stopped her touring for her last novel, The Stars Are Fire.
Footnotes
- Anita Shreve — Wikipedia
- The Pilot’s Wife — Wikipedia
- ‘Resistance,’ ‘The Pilot’s Wife’ author Anita Shreve dies — Boston.com (AP), 2018
- Anita Shreve dies — The Bookseller, 2018
- Fortune’s Rocks — Hachette Book Group
- Shreve, Anita — Encyclopedia.com
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“It doesn’t interest me to write about women who aren’t real.”
— Anita Shreve, interview with The Writer (2014)
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