The Dogs Of Littlefield Suzanne Berne by Suzanne Berne 9780241962671, 0241962676, B00D8Q0DO6 instant download after payment.

A “brilliantly done” (Sunday Times, London) comedy of manners that explores the unease behind the manicured lawns of suburban America from the Orange Prize-winning author of A Crime in the Neighborhood

"[Berne] is a sure hand at the dinner parties, school concerts, teacup tempests, and true moments of suspense that make a suburban comedy of manners par excellence. It's too bad about the dogs, but they died for a good cause."  -  Kirkus Reviews

Littlefield, Massachusetts, named one of the Ten Best Places to Live in America, full of psychologists and college professors, is proud of its fine schools, its girls’ soccer teams, its leafy streets, and its charming village centre. Yet no sooner has sociologist Dr Clarice Watkins arrived to study the elements of “good quality of life” than someone begins poisoning the town’s dogs. 

Are the poisonings in protest to an off-leash proposal for Baldwin Park - the subject of much town debate - or the sign of a far deeper disorder? Certainly, these types of things don’t happen in Littlefield.

"Her unique voice comes through in the combination of a forensic approach to her characters' foibles and lyrical descriptions of the changing of the seasons in New England. This is an apparently light tale but there are dark shadows in Littlefield too. Berne's novel is both absorbing and amusing, and lingers in the memory."  -  The Independent (UK)

With an element of suspense, satirical social commentary, and in-depth character portraits, Suzanne Berne’s nuanced novel reveals the discontent concealed behind the manicured lawns and picket fences of the darkest suburbia. The Dogs Of Littlefield is “a compelling, poignant yet unsentimental novel that examines life, love, and loss” (Sunday Mirror, UK).