‘Timely and timeless … Will hold any reader to its last haunting page’ Chicago Tribune

The early life of Joe Allston, the retired literary agent of Stegner’s National Book Award-winning novel, The Spectator Bird, features in this disquieting and keenly observed novel. Scarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat. And although their new home looks like Eden, it also has serpents: Jim Peck, a messianic exponent of drugs, yoga and sex; and Marian Catlin, an attractive young woman whose otherworldly innocence is far more appealing - and far more dangerous.

‘The Great Gatsby captures the twenties and yet transcends them. All the Little Live Things is a comparable achievement for the sixties … Stegner’s craft is here at an apex’ Virginia Quarterly Review