The author
About Nolan Maren
Nolan Maren writes warm, grown-up novels about the second half of life: the houses people inherit, the plans they set aside, and the love that turns up later than anyone expected.
The Penrose Street Stories are set in Aberly, Pennsylvania, a slate town at the foot of Blue Mountain, where everybody knows your business and most of them are right about it. A school-bus contractor finds her grandchildren on her route sheet. An overnight clerk wins $3.2 million. A chapel organist begins to lose her hearing. A new councilwoman holds the deciding vote on land that could flood her town. Each novel belongs to one person’s year and stands on its own. Read them in order and the town fills in around you.
The standalone novels return to the places people thought they had left behind: an aunt’s house above a Maine harbor, a Vermont lake camp two families have shared since 1962, a box of college drawings in a Cincinnati garage, a basement full of a father’s notebooks in the Hudson Valley.
These are books for readers who love complicated relationships, honest choices, and endings that feel earned.
Where the novels live
Five places, one kind of story
Aberly, Pennsylvania
A slate town at the foot of Blue Mountain, and the home of The Penrose Street Stories.
Port Haven, Maine
A working harbor, a boatyard, and an aunt’s weathered Cape in What June Kept.
A Vermont lake
A camp two families have shared since 1962 in One More August.
Cincinnati, Ohio
An 1889 Turner hall waiting to be saved in The Life She Put Away.
The Hudson Valley
A family house on Delaney Street in The Parts We Left Out.
Find Nolan online
For book clubs & media
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Letters from Nolan
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