Maeve Binchy: Three Great Novels (Scarlet Feather / Tara Road / Evening Class)

It's the perfect gift: Laughter, the best medicine! From beloved author Maeve Binchy, who has captured the hearts of millions with her spectacular national bestsellers, including Circle of Friends and Tara Road. In Evening Class, she applies her signature warmth, wit and understanding to something new--a wickedly funny book for anyone who's checked into the hospital, headed for an operation or convalesced at home. Maeve Binchy can always be counted on to spin an involving tale about ordinary people that brings out the extraordinary in everyone. Here, she zooms in on the working-class of Dublin. Schoolteacher Aidan Dunne organises an evening class in Italian with the help of Nora O'Donoghue, an Irishwoman returning home after 26 years in Sicily. When the somewhat squashed-by-life denizens of the surrounding neighbourhood take the unexpected step of enrolling in the class, they find their lives transformed. Binchy tells her story from the viewpoints of eight different characters and rewards both them and her readers with happy endings after the requisite rocky road. Reading a novel by Maeve Binchy is like catching up with old friends--you know everything will turn out fine in the end, but you're still interested in how things get that way.