The Development

A merry satire about the smart, moneyed, and demanding retirees living in a gated community . . . Scintillating on the surface and churning with danger below (Booklist). From a National Book Award-winning author, this is a collection of nine darkly comic stories set in a gated community on Maryland's Eastern Shore (Publishers Weekly). Something has disturbed the comfortably aging denizens of Heron Bay Estates, a pristine retirement community in Chesapeake Bay. In the dawn of the new millennium-and the evening of their lives-these empty nesters have discovered that their tidy enclave can be surprisingly colorful, shocking, and surreal. From the high jinks of a toga party to a baffling suicide pact, John Barth, a comic genius of the highest order, brings compassion to the lives of his characters with the mordant humor that has earned him a reputation as one of our most original storytellers (The New York Times Book Review). Disturbing, but humorous . . . Reading 'The Development' is a worthy investment in lofty literary real estate. -The Seattle Times Perhaps the most prodigally gifted comic novelists writing in English today. -Newsweek A low-key, clear-eyed, battered-but-unbowed portrait of the diminishments and minor pleasures of age. Barth's prose still has its sinew and snap; he examines near-decrepitude with mordant, rueful wit. -Kirkus Reviews