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

"A low-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