A Spool of Blue Thread

**THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015** 'It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon...' This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that summer's day in 1959. The whole family on the porch, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before. From that porch we spool back through the generations, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define the family. From Red's father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red's grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century - four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their home... **ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 1 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE** 'One of my favourite authors ' Liane Moriarty 'She spins gold' Elizabeth Buchan 'Anne Tyler has no peer' Anita Shreve 'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks