Author Guide · Literary Fiction
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Before her first novel came out, Sue Miller spent the 1970s teaching preschool at the Harvard Day Care Centers while raising her son on her own. That novel, The Good Mother (1986), about a divorced woman who loses custody of her four-year-old daughter, spent more than six months on the New York Times bestseller list and was filmed two years later with Diane Keaton and Liam Neeson. She was 42. Since then she has written novels about marriages, families and the secrets inside them, set mostly in Boston, Chicago, Vermont and New England towns; one, While I Was Gone, became an Oprah’s Book Club pick in 2000. This guide covers her 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1986–2020 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Sue Miller has published eleven novels, one story collection and one memoir. Her best-known books are The Good Mother (1986), Family Pictures (1990), While I Was Gone (1999) and Monogamy (2020). Start with While I Was Gone: a long-married veterinarian, an old friend and an unsolved killing from her years in a Cambridge commune.
Where to Start with Sue Miller
If you want a place to begin
→ While I Was Gone (1999) — the 2000 Oprah’s Book Club pick.
If you want the book that made her name
→ The Good Mother (1986) — the 1986 custody novel.
If you want a marriage examined after a death
→ Monogamy (2020) — her most recent novel.
If you want her nonfiction
→ The Story of My Father (2003) — a memoir of her father’s Alzheimer’s disease.
13 Sue Miller Books, in Order
The Good Mother
Anna Dunlap, recently divorced, lives with her four-year-old daughter Molly and falls in love with Leo, a sculptor. Her ex-husband sues for custody, alleging improper contact between Leo and Molly, and Anna loses her daughter. It spent more than six months on the New York Times bestseller list and was filmed in 1988 by Leonard Nimoy, with Diane Keaton and Liam Neeson.
Inventing the Abbotts
Her only story collection. The title story is told by Doug, watching his brother Jacey court three sisters from the richest family in a small Midwestern town; other stories follow a divorced mother and her adult son, and a grandmother changed by a stroke. The title story became the 1997 film Inventing the Abbotts, with Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Crudup and Liv Tyler.
Family Pictures
The Eberhardts of Chicago, from the years after the Second World War to the mid-1980s. David, a psychiatrist, blames his wife Lainey for their son Randall’s autism; she goes on to have three more children, partly to prove him wrong. It was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and adapted for television in 1993.
For Love
Lottie Gardner, a woman in her forties, looks back over a life of several marriages and divorces, and of the names that came and went with them. Some critics found its lack of a single central plot a weakness.
The Distinguished Guest
Lily Maynard, an elderly writer who is now ill, moves in with her youngest son Alan and his wife Gaby. A journalist, Linnett, arrives to write about her life, and old family grievances come up alongside questions of race and middle-class guilt.
While I Was Gone
Jo Becker, a veterinarian married to a minister, with three grown daughters, meets Eli Mayhew, who shared a Cambridge commune with her in the 1960s. What he tells her reopens the unsolved killing of one of their housemates and tests her marriage. It was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club in 2000.
The World Below
Cath Hubbard, 52 and recently divorced, retreats to her grandparents’ house in Vermont. There she finds the diary of her grandmother Georgia, and the novel moves between Cath’s present and Georgia’s girlhood, including her time in a tuberculosis sanatorium.
The Story of My Father
Her only nonfiction book: an account of her father’s Alzheimer’s disease and death. He was a church historian and a former dean of Princeton Theological Seminary, and she writes about caring for him and about the limits of what she could do.
Lost in the Forest
Eva runs a bookstore in the California wine country. When her second husband John is killed by a car, her ex-husband Mark helps with the children, while their younger daughter Daisy, 14, grieving the one adult who saw her, is drawn into an exploitative relationship with an older man, the husband of Eva’s best friend.
The Senator’s Wife
In a Connecticut college town in 1993, Meri, newly married to a history professor, buys half a duplex next to Delia Naughton, wife of the former senator Tom Naughton, known for his infidelities. Meri is drawn to Delia, reads letters she should not, and is caught up in the couple’s marriage after Tom has a stroke and Delia brings him home.
The Lake Shore Limited
Billy Gertz, a playwright, lost her lover Gus in the attacks of 11 September 2001. Her new play imagines a man waiting to learn whether his estranged wife died in a bombing of the Lake Shore Limited train in Chicago. The novel moves between Boston and Vermont and between four people the play connects: Billy, Gus’s sister Leslie, the actor Rafe and Sam, a man drawn to Billy.
The Arsonist
Frankie, worn out after years with an aid organisation in Africa, comes home to her parents in Pomeroy, New Hampshire, on the night the first of a series of house fires breaks out, mostly at summer people’s homes. She falls for Bud, who runs the local paper and covers the fires, while her mother Sylvia cares for her father Alfie, who is developing Alzheimer’s.
Monogamy
Graham, a generous Boston bookseller, has been married to Annie, a photographer, for about 30 years. He dies of a heart attack early in the novel, the day after ending an affair, and Annie later finds out about it and has to reconsider the man and the marriage she thought she knew.
In What Order to Read Sue Miller
None of Sue Miller’s novels continue from one another, so you can read them in any order. Publication order does show a shift: the early books are about mothers and young children and the threat of losing them; from While I Was Gone on, the main characters are older, and the subject turns to long marriages, ageing parents and what the past did to the present.
The Story of My Father sits naturally next to The Arsonist, which returns to a parent with Alzheimer’s disease. Monogamy reads well after While I Was Gone: both are about a long marriage tested by something one partner did not know.
A reading path
1. While I Was Gone (1999)
2. The Good Mother (1986)
3. Family Pictures (1990)
4. The Senator’s Wife (2008)
5. Monogamy (2020)
The years · 1943–2020
Quick facts about Sue Miller
- Known for
- Sue Miller is known for close, realistic novels about marriage, motherhood and family secrets, beginning with the bestselling custody novel The Good Mother in 1986.
- 1943
- Born in Chicago, Illinois
- 1964
- Graduates from Radcliffe College
- 1986
- The Good Mother
- 2000
- Oprah’s Book Club picks While I Was Gone
- 2020
- Monogamy
- Born
- 29 November 1943, Chicago, Illinois; her father was a minister and church historian
- Education
- Radcliffe College (BA, 1964); master’s degrees from Harvard, Boston University and Wesleyan
- Before writing
- Taught preschool at the Harvard Day Care Centers in the 1970s
- Taught
- Fiction at Smith, Amherst, Tufts, MIT and Boston University
- Honours
- Guggenheim and Radcliffe Institute fellowships; National Book Critics Circle Award shortlist for Family Pictures
- Adaptations
- The Good Mother (1988) and Inventing the Abbotts (1997) on film
The red mark is 1986: The Good Mother, her first novel and first bestseller.
How Sue Miller Writes: Ordinary Lives Under Pressure
Miller builds her novels around one event that breaks open a family’s ordinary life: a custody suit in The Good Mother, a son’s autism in Family Pictures, a husband’s sudden death in Lost in the Forest and Monogamy. The drama stays domestic: kitchens, bookstores, a shared duplex, a parent’s sickroom.
Her central characters are usually women in Boston, Cambridge or New England towns, and many of the later ones are in middle age or older. She has said that “with each work I feel I’m playing around with the idea of self”, and her books keep asking how much of a person is chosen and how much is made by marriage, children and the past. She has also objected to being described as someone who writes only about family.
Secrets carry much of the plot: a housemate’s killing in While I Was Gone, letters found while house-sitting in The Senator’s Wife, an affair discovered after a death in Monogamy. Illness and ageing recur too, from the tuberculosis sanatorium in The World Below to the Alzheimer’s disease of her own father in The Story of My Father and of Alfie in The Arsonist.
Watch
Sue Miller at the New York State Writers Institute
Sue Miller is interviewed at the New York State Writers Institute in Albany on 2 February 2009. From the official New York State Writers Institute channel.
Frequently asked questions about Sue Miller’s books
How many books has Sue Miller written?
Thirteen: eleven novels, from The Good Mother (1986) to Monogamy (2020), the story collection Inventing the Abbotts (1987) and the memoir The Story of My Father (2003). All 13 are on this page.
What are Sue Miller’s books in order?
The Good Mother (1986), Inventing the Abbotts (1987), Family Pictures (1990), For Love (1993), The Distinguished Guest (1995), While I Was Gone (1999), The World Below (2001), The Story of My Father (2003), Lost in the Forest (2005), The Senator’s Wife (2008), The Lake Shore Limited (2010), The Arsonist (2014) and Monogamy (2020).
Where should I start with Sue Miller?
While I Was Gone (1999), the Oprah’s Book Club pick about a veterinarian whose past in a Cambridge commune comes back. If you want the book that made her name, start with The Good Mother.
What is Sue Miller’s most famous book?
The Good Mother (1986), her first novel. It spent more than six months on the New York Times bestseller list and was filmed in 1988.
Was The Good Mother made into a film?
Yes. The Good Mother (1988) was directed by Leonard Nimoy, with Diane Keaton as Anna Dunlap and Liam Neeson as Leo. It was released by Touchstone Pictures in November 1988.
Which other Sue Miller books have been adapted?
The title story of Inventing the Abbotts became a 1997 film directed by Pat O’Connor, with Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Crudup, Liv Tyler and Jennifer Connelly. Family Pictures was adapted for television in 1993.
Was a Sue Miller book in Oprah’s Book Club?
Yes. While I Was Gone (1999) was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club in 2000.
Has Sue Miller won any prizes?
Family Pictures was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has held Guggenheim and Radcliffe Institute fellowships, and she chaired PEN New England for four years.
Is The Story of My Father a novel?
No. It is her only nonfiction book, a memoir of her father’s Alzheimer’s disease and death. He had been a dean of Princeton Theological Seminary.
What is Monogamy by Sue Miller about?
A Boston bookseller, Graham, and his wife Annie, a photographer, married about 30 years. After Graham dies suddenly, Annie learns that he had been having an affair, and has to rethink their marriage.
Footnotes
- Sue Miller — Wikipedia
- Sue Miller, Novelist — official site
- Miller, Sue 1943- — Encyclopedia.com
- The Good Mother (1988 film) — Wikipedia
- Monogamy — Kirkus Reviews
- The Arsonist — Kirkus Reviews
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.
“With each work I feel I’m playing around with the idea of self.”
— Sue Miller, interview with Ron Fletcher, BookPage
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