John Wilder is in his mid-thirties, a successful salesman with a place in the country, an adoring wife and a ten-year-old son. But something is wrong. His family no longer interests him, his infidelities are leading him nowhere and he has begun to drink too much. Then one night, something inside John snaps and he calls his wife to tell her that he isn't coming home.

In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is about to crumble.
With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

Robert Prentice has spent all his life attempting to escape his mother's stifling presence. His mother, Alice, for her part, struggles with her own demons as she attempts to realize her dreams of prosperity and success as a sculptor. As Robert goes off to fight in Europe, hoping to become his own man, Richard Yates portrays a soldier in the depths of war striving to live up to his heroic ideals. With haunting clarity, Yates crafts an unforgettable portrait of two people who cannot help but hope for more even as life challenges them both.

All the sorrows of Evan Shepard's loutish adolescence were redeemed at seventeen, in 1935, when he fell in love with automobiles...In the small suburban town of Cold Spring Harbor, Evan Shephard and his young bride Rachel yearn to escape the mistakes of their parents. But as they discover, families exert a hold as tight as fate, and every way out only ends up back home.

The famous opening line of the novel warns of the bleak narrative to follow, "Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce." Emily and Sarah Grimes are sisters who share little in terms of character but much in terms of disappointment with their lives. Emily, the more intellectual and cosmopolitan of the two, seeks love in numerous disappointing affairs and short-term relationships while Sarah, the prettier and more conventional sister, marries young and bears children to an uncouth and abusive husband. Their troubled, rootless mother, Pookie, like many Yatesian matriarchs, is likely modeled on his own mother, who was nicknamed "Dookie". The novel, beginning in the 1930s when the sisters are children and ending in the 1970s with Sarah's death, primarily revolves around Emily as the book's central character, though the book employs Yates' characteristic and seamless shifts of consciousness throughout.

Robert Prentice is eighteen, and his boyhood dreams have disintegrated on the battlefields of Europe. At home, his mother, Alice, wraps herself in fantasy against the relentless disappointments of life. From his compelling portraits of these two damaged souls, Richard Yates creates a brilliant novel of post-war America, at odds with its own identity, striving to combine prosperity and ideals, mercilessly exposed in the attempt to do so. At once tender and ironic, bitterly sad and achingly funny, "A Special Providence" is the second novel by the author of "Revolutionary Road".

In The Easter Parade , first published in 1976, we meet sisters Sarah and Emily Grimes when they are still the children of divorced parents. We observe the sisters over four decades, watching them grow into two very different women. Sarah is stable and stalwart, settling into an unhappy marriage. Emily is precocious and independent, struggling with one unsatisfactory love affair after another. Richard Yates's classic novel is about how both women struggle to overcome their tarnished family's past, and how both finally reach for some semblance of renewal.

Hailed as “America’s finest realistic novelist” by the Boston Globe, Richard Yates, author of Revolutionary Road, garnered rare critical acclaim for his bracing, unsentimental portraits of middle-class American life . Disturbing the Peace is no exception. Haunting, troubling, and mesmerizing, it shines a brilliant, unwavering light into the darkest recesses of a man’s psyche.
To all appearances, John Wilder has all the trappings of success, circa 1960: a promising career in advertising, a loving family, a beautiful apartment, even a country home. John’s evenings are spent with associates at quiet Manhattan lounges and his weekends with friends at glittering cocktail parties. But something deep within this seemingly perfect life has long since gone wrong. Something has disturbed John’s fragile peace, and he can no longer find solace in fleeting affairs or alcohol. The anger, the drinking, and the recklessness are building to a crescendo—and they’re about to take down John’s career and his family. What happens next will send John on a long, strange journey—at once tragic and inevitable.

All the sorrows of Evan Shepard's loutish adolescence were redeemed at seventeen, in 1935, when he fell in love with automobiles...In the small suburban town of Cold Spring Harbor, Evan Shephard and his young bride Rachel yearn to escape the mistakes of their parents. But as they discover, families exert a hold as tight as fate, and every way out only ends up back home.

迈克尔•达文波特是个从二战欧洲战场退伍的年轻人，踌躇满志，梦想成为诗人、剧作家。他清高，为艺术而活，不愿染指妻子的钱，可还是得为一家商业杂志撰文来维持他的写诗爱好。妻子露茜异常富有，却一直不明白自己想要什么，只觉得别人似乎都比她快乐。随着时间的推移，眼看着别人功成名就而自己却仍默默无闻，这对夫妻的焦虑与日俱增。他们过去的幸福生活也被私通与孤立所吞噬，而他们自以为已经逃离的单调生活如同梦魇一样挥之不去。在这部小说中，耶茨再次选择了他最为擅长的破碎的美国梦为其主题，用现实的重锤敲碎了梦想的天真，带来难以比拟的钝痛。

“格兰姆斯家的两姐妹都不会过上幸福的生活，回过头看，总是让人觉得问题始自她们父母的离婚。”
孩提时代的萨拉和爱米莉便已是两个截然不同的女孩。在爱米莉眼中，理智的姐姐总是高高在上，她嫉妒姐姐与爸爸（爸爸因为离婚而离开了她们）的关系，也嫉妒姐姐后来看似美满的婚姻。爱米莉为自己选择了一条并不那么安全也异于传统的道路，所有的风流情事都无法真正满足她。虽然联系姐妹的纽带一直存在，但是她们之间的距离却是越来越远……
* * *
二十世纪最具洞察力的作家。
——《泰晤士报》
二十世纪最伟大的美国小说家之一。
——《周日电讯》
自福楼拜以来，鲜少有人像此书作者一样对生活在水深火热中的妇女表达出那么深切的同情。
——库尔特·冯内古特
故事真实而感人，悲伤而优美。耶茨就像是温柔化了的厄普代克，用不那么咄咄逼人的语言诠释了美国郊区的现实。
——TIME OUT
美国最好的战后小说家和短篇故事作家之一。他为他身处的时代贡献了一些最出色的小说，也给今天有幸一读的读者带来了乐趣。
——《独立报》
充满活力、引人入胜……每个字词都低调地营造出一种幻觉，仿佛故事完全是自己在发展……一部成功的文学作品。
——《时代周刊》
《复活节游行》是我今年读过的最好的当代小说。
——朱利安·巴恩斯
这是理查德·耶茨最好的小说。从开篇直至结尾……我爱这本书。
——琼‧迪迪安