Diane Johnson

"A comedic novel about an American woman leaving her 20-year marriage to her French husband, returning to her native San Francisco to pick up the life she left behind, and the entwining lives of her children and grandchildren"--

A Novel

Lorna Mott Comes Home

Pregnant and abandoned, Roxeanne Walker de Persand has her rough-edged sister, Isabel, come to Paris to help her through this period where the powerful Persand family is pushing for a divorce and control of a valuable Walker family heirloom.

Le Divorce

On the eve of the revolution in Iran, Chloe Fowler, alone after the unexpected departure of her doctor husband, finds herself in a country undergoing violent change where everyone suspects everyone of something

Persian Nights

Attempting to rekindle a romance with a worldly Englishman as part of a cover-up for her assignment with the CIA, Lulu Sawyer finds the delicate balance between her public and covert worlds disintegrating when she attempts to aid two Middle Eastern women. By the author of Le Divorce. 75,000 first printing.

Lulu in Marrakech

A classic of alternative biography and feminist writing, this empathetic and witty book gives due to a "lesser" figure of history, Mary Ellen Peacock Meredith, who was brilliant, unconventional, and at odds with the constraints of Victorian life. "Many people have described the Famous Writer presiding at his dinner table. . . . He is famous; everybody remembers his remarks. . . . We forget that there were other family members at the table--a quiet person, now muffled by time, shadowy, whose heart pounded with love, perhaps, or rage." So begins The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives, an uncommon biography devoted to one of those "lesser lives." As the author points out, "A lesser life does not seem lesser to the person who leads one." Such sympathy and curiosity compelled Diane Johnson to research Mary Ellen Peacock Meredith (1821-1861), the daughter of the famous artist Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) and first wife of the equally famous poet George Meredith (1828-1909). Her life, treated perfunctorily and prudishly in biographies of Peacock or Meredith, is here exquisitely and unhurriedly given its due. What emerges is the portrait of a brilliant, well-educated woman, raised unconventionally by her father only to feel more forcefully the constraints of the Victorian era. First published in 1972, Lesser Lives has been a key text for feminists and biographers alike, a book that reimagined what biography might be, both in terms of subject and style. Biographies of other "lesser" lives have since followed in its footsteps, but few have the wit, elegance, and empathy of Johnson's seminal work.

The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives

A series of violent happenings add to a young woman's conviction that she is going to be murdered

The Shadow Knows

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST "If one were to cross Jane Austen and Henry James, the result would be Diane Johnson."—San Francisco Chronicle The national bestseller and inspiration for the major motion picture starring Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson! Called "stylish... refreshing... genuinely wise” by The New York Times Book Review,this delightful comedy of manners and morals, money, marriage, and murder follows smart, sexy, and impeccably dressed American Isabel Walker as she lands in Paris to visit her stepsister Roxy, a poet whose marriage to an aristocratic French painter has assured her a coveted place in Parisian society—until her husband leaves her for the wife of an American lawyer. Could "le divorce" be far behind? Can irrepressible Isabel keep her perspective (and her love life) intact as cultures and human passions collide? "Social comedy at its best" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), Le Divorce is Diane Johnson at her most scintillating and sublime.

A personal account by the two-time finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award follows her response to a French friend's accusation that Americans seem indifferent to history and her discoveries about her long-time Midwestern family's complex pioneer heritage.

A Memoir

Flyover Lives

A proper Frenchwoman married to an American journalist finds herself in the midst of a scandal involving a stolen manuscript, a reclusive film director, and his actress wife. By the author of Le Divorce.

Le Mariage

Dashiell Hammett, a Life

A wickedly funny and observant novel about the delicate questions of love, death and money. Amy Hawkins, Californian millionairess, is travelling in Europe, to find her culture, her roots and a cause to which she might devote her considerable fortune. She lands at one of the finest small hotels in the French Alps - a hotel noted for skiing and its famous cooking lessons - and soon finds that Americans are not the flavour of the month in France. A few days into her trip, she narrowly survives an avalanche. Two of the hotel's other guests, English publisher Adrian Venn and his much younger wife Kerry, are not as fortunate and both lie comatose in a nearby hospital. Amy steps in as Adrian's children - young and old, legitimate and illegitimate - assemble in Valmeri to protect their interests should he not pull through, and in her innocence sets in motion a series of events in France and England that threaten to topple carefully built family alliances once and for all. Add one or two small affaires and soon it is, as the French would say, a situation.

L'Affaire

"Like Jane Austen, Johnson delights in the worldly rituals surrounding courtship and marriage... she is a philosopher as much as a novelist."—The New Yorker From the author of the acclaimed bestseller and National Book Award finalist Le Divorce, a sparkling comedy of manners once again set in the world of Americans in Paris Anne-Sophie is a young Frenchwoman engaged to Tim Nolinger, an American journalist hot on the trail of a breaking story: The theft of a valuable illuminated manuscript from a private collection in New York, which may now be in the possession of a reclusive film director living on the outskirts of Paris. As Tim, Anne-Sophie, a pair of American antique dealers, and one amorous member of the local gentry converge on the director's chateau, the director's wife—a former actress—is accused of desecrating a national monument. Add to that a disappearing American; a hunting contretemps; a wrongful arrest; and murder, and you have this sexy, stylish, delight of a novel that celebrates the paradoxes of marriage and morality as they are perceived on both sides of the Atlantic. Filled with the author's pithy insights and hilarious asides, Le Mariage is Diane Johnson at her very best.

Amy Hawkins, a young dot-com executive from California who has made her fortune at the top of the NASDAQ, sets off to Europe, and a few days into her trip, she is nearly swept away by an avalanche.

Diane Johnson returns with another expatriate comedy of manners in this tale of a young dot-com executive from California who sets off for Europe to find culture, her roots, and maybe a cause to devote her considerable fortune to. When Amy checks into one of the finest small hotels in the French Alps - a hotel noted for skiing and for cooking lessons - she encounters a memorable cast of Euro trash aristocrats and ski enthusiasts. She has no plans to fall in love. But on the first afternoon, she is nearly swept away by an avalanche. Johnson's unerring ear for the cadences of the two cultures, her wit, and her shrewd insight into contemporary manners make her latest work a treat for fans of transatlantic relations. "If one were to cross Jane Austen and Henry James, the result would be Diane Johnson." (San Francisco Chronicle)

A biography of the enigmatic, popular, and legendary American writer chronicles the shaping of his vision and his bursts of creativity

Lulu Sawyer arrives in Marrakech hoping to rekindle her romance with businessman Ian Drumm. It's the perfect cover for her assignment with the CIA: tracing the flow of money from donors to radical Islamic groups. As she navigates the complex interface of East and West, Lulu stumbles into unforeseen intrigues: a young Muslim girl, Suma, is on the run from her brother intent on an honour killing; and a beautiful Saudi woman, Gazi, is vying for Ian's love, leaving her husband in a desperate bid to escape her repressive society. The more Lulu immerses herself in the workings of Marrakech, the more questions emerge as beneath the surface of this polite expatriate community lies a more sinister world laced with double standards as well as double agents.

Discusses why humans travel, how travel changes them, and the willingness to face danger in the name of adventure, and takes readers to such places as London, St. Petersburg, and Bangkok

Diane Johnson

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