Wealthy widow Norah O'Neill wonders if she will ever marry again. When her son decides to close the family's failing toy factory, the manager, a decent man who dances the quickstep beautifully, becomes unemployed. Suddenly, Norah sees her chance for happiness, in a new venture of her own. United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love's endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love...

Author Biography

William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928 and spent his childhood in provincial Ireland. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin. He has written many novels, and won many prizes including the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. The Hill Bachelors (2000), a collection of short stories, won both the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award for Short Stories and the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction in 2001. The Story of Lucy Gault (2002), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. William Trevor's latest books are: A Bit On the Side (2004), on the theme of adultery; The Dressmaker's Child (2005); and Cheating at Canasta (2007). Many of William Trevor's stories have appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines. He has also written plays for the stage, and for radio and television. In 2002 William Trevor was awarded an honorary knighthood in recognition of his services to literature.