One warm summer's day at the beach, forty-year-old Cordelia Grinstead, dressed only in a swimsuit and beach robe, walks away from her family and just keeps on going. After hitching a ride with a stranger to a new town where she knows no one, she reinvents herself as a single woman with no ties and begins living a new life altogether. But how long can she keep this up before her real life finds her? OVER A MILLION ANNE TYLER BOOKS SOLD `She's changed my perception on life' Anna Chancellor `One of my favourite authors ' Liane Moriarty `She spins gold' Elizabeth Buchan `Anne Tyler has no peer' Anita Shreve `My favourite writer, and the best line-and-length novelist in the world' Nick Hornby `A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks `Tyler is not merely good, she is wickedly good' John Updike `I love Anne Tyler' Anita Brookner `Her fiction has strength of vision, originality, freshness, unconquerable humour' Eudora Welty