You'd probably better be on your game if you're attending Barnard College and sign up to take a course from English and writing professor Mary Gordon. A Guggenheim fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Gordon is the author of four bestselling novels, a collection of short stories and a critically lauded memoir called "Circling My Mother."

Her latest book, "The Liar's Wife," comprises four novellas about relationships both historical and contemporary, abroad and at home. In one, an elderly man remembers when, as a teen, he was chosen to introduce Thomas Mann at a lecture. In another - the title piece - a wealthy Connecticut woman's comfortable life is disrupted when she's visited by the husband she ran from half a century before.

Gordon will sign copies and discuss "The Liar's Wife" at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Mystic's Bank Square Books.

- RICK KOSTER

Mary Gordon, 6 p.m. Tuesday, Bank Square Books, 53 West Main St., Mystic; free; (860) 536-3795.