SNOWED IN

Three months after moving to Portland, Maine, for her husband Paul's job, Sophie begins worrying about her quiet life, her "safe" marriage and, particularly, Natalie, the snappy new assistant in her husband's office. Calls to her happily married sister, Delia, and her long-time friend, Marta, don't assuage her concerns, but Sophie, a freelance artist and proofreader with time on her hands, finds companionship by joining a local walking club. In a captivating tale, Bartolomeo (Cupid and Diana ) combines Anne Tyler's brand of trenchant domestic observation with a comic flair all her own (Sophie's know-it-all mother-in-law, Pepper, is "good for twenty more years. She wasn't the sort who succumbed early to cancer or heart attacks—she was the sort who caused them in those around her"). Sophie finds a kindred spirit in Ned, another member of the walking group, who offers to give her driving lessons, and Bartolomeo delicately charts the course of their developing rapport amid Sophie's troubled marriage and Ned's long-distance relationship with a girlfriend. Bartolomeo offers rare insight into friendship and romance in this sweetly poignant page-turner, leaving readers rooting for Sophie, her newfound confidence and the future that awaits her around the next bend. Agent, Henry Dunow . (Nov.)