The Development

"A merry satire about the smart, moneyed,and demanding retirees living in agated 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

"Alow-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