A return to the Hub of the Universe

Susan Cheever has written three novels, along with memoirs about her heavy drinking ("Notes Found in a Bottle"), her life with fabled author father John ("Home Before Dark"), and child-rearing ("As Good As I Could Be").

So what's in her next book? Why, a history of Concord's famed literary and Transcendentalist community of the mid-19th century, of course. The title, likely the season's longest, explains her focus: "American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work."

Cheever's latest, focusing on the best and brightest of an era when the Boston area fancied itself the Athens of America or the Hub of the Universe (take your pick), will be published by Simon & Schuster and hits the stores in December.