Tender yet wickedly intelligent summer reading from Anne Tyler's naughty little sister

One winter a strange, formidable wind blows into the bedrooms of Stellar Plains, New Jersey, and most particularly, into the hearts and loins of Dory and Robby Lang - the easy-going and popular high school teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High school - whose comfortable lives are suddenly thrown into confusion when Dory finds herself inexplicably repelled by her husband's touch.

Back at school, in a curious case of life imitating art, the mysterious new drama teacher Fran Heller chooses as the end-of-term play Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata, in which women withhold sexual privileges from their menfolk as a way to end the interminable Peloponnesian War. All across town, a quiet battle starts to take place between the sexes as caresses go unreciprocated, relationships come to abrupt and unexpected ends and marital issues suddenly explode to the surface.

Women across Stellar Plains continue to be claimed by the spell - from Bev Cutler, the overweight guidance counsellor who has 'let herself go', to Leanne Bannerjee, the sexy school psychologist who could have any man she wants - even the Langs' teenage daughter, Willa, is not left untouched - until everything comes to a climax on the first night of Lysistrata...