Her husband leaves her for another woman, and her best friend announces an unplanned pregnancy at the age of forty-one. Bernie's behavior goes from acting out to out-of-hand, and she finds herself in trouble at home, out of work and banned from the mall after a confrontation at the cosmetic counter.When her mother discovers her father's book of cryptograms, Bernie realizes his encoded lessons in living might be exactly what she needs to survive. From dealing with her family's grief and bonding with her best friend's thirteen-year-old daughter, to dieting, dating and mindless almost-sex with the landscaper, Bernie discovers what her father always knew.In life, you either choose to sing a rainbow, or you don't.For Bernie, the singing is about to begin.

    She's always wanted to be known as "somebody.” Somebody besides a high school beauty queen in the small town of Shady Creek, West Virginia. Somebody besides the wife of football hero, John "Wasper" Waddell. More than the mother of twins. More than the town’s most sought after beautician, in the shop she owns with her twin sister, Joy Ruth. She's tired of living in the run down Victorian home her husband inherited from his Grandma Belle, even if Eleanor Roosevelt might have once sat in the wicker chair still on their front porch. Vada Faith longs for a new home in the fancy subdivision of Crystal Springs. Then, Roy and Dottie Kilgore swoop into town, wanting a child of their own, and bringing money to burn.In going after her own dreams, Vada Faith nearly destroys the lives of those she loves.

    Then the romantic comedy movie adaptation starring Diane Lane and John Cusack. Now MUST LOVE DOGS is a series!"Voluptuous, sensuous, alluring and fun. Barely 40 DWF seeks special man to share starlit nights. Must love dogs."Divorced preschool teacher Sarah Hurlihy's first mistake is letting her bossy big sister write her personal ad. Her second mistake is showing up to meet her first date in more than a decade. Now she's juggling her teaching job, her big, rollicking, interfering south-of-Boston Irish family, and more men than she knows what to do with. And what's up with all these dogs that are suddenly galloping into her life?"A hilariously original tale about dating and its place in a modern woman's life." -BookPage"If Must Love Dogs is any indication of her talents, readers will hope that Claire Cook will be telling breezy summer stories from the South Shore of Massachusetts for seasons to come." -The Washington Post"A laugh-out-loud novel . . . a light and lively read for anyone who has ever tried to re-enter the dating scene or tried to 'fix up' anyone else." -Boston Herald"This utterly charming novel by Cook is a fun read, perfect for whiling away an afternoon on the beach." -Library Journal "Claire Cook's Must Love Dogs, a book that's got more giggles than soda bread has raisins." -Hartford Courant"Claire Cook (Must Love Dogs) has built a brand writing light-hearted women's fiction blending kernels of the absurd and comedic in compulsively readable combinations." -Shelf Awareness"The exuberant and charming Claire Cook is one of the sassiest and funniest creators of contemporary women's fiction." -The Times-Picayune

    For a while, she found a safe haven in her marriage to bestselling crime novelist Stephen Ludlow—until his car skidded into Echo Bay. But Stephen’s wasn’t the only body pulled from the icy waters that night. When details about a mysterious violet-eyed blonde become public, a media circus ensues, and Christy-Lynn runs again.Desperate for answers, she’s shattered to learn that Stephen and his mistress had a child—a little girl named Iris, who now lives in poverty with her ailing great-grandmother. The thought of Iris abandoned to the foster care system—as Christy-Lynn once was—is unbearable. But she’s spent her whole life running—determined never to be hurt again. Will she finally stand still long enough to open herself up to forgiveness and love?

    She’s followed all the rules. Her star is rising at work, her boyfriend is amazing and she lives in a perfectly decorated apartment. A delayed flight throws her life and plans off schedule. What she learns, stuck overnight in the airport, has her questioning everything and puts her face to face with her own missed connection.

    As soon as she arrives people look at her oddly, treat her like royalty and keep referring to her as Rosie Reynolds. She discovers that Rosie is the Big Apple’s favourite talk show host and after Rosie’s botched face-lift, Jane is offered the job of emergency stand-in on Happy Hour, the show that made Rosie famous. But here she meets Lou, a dangerously charming man who also happens to be Rosie’s husband...

    In New York City, beautiful stay-at-home mom Vanessa is obsessively searching the Internet for news of an old flame. And in San Francisco, Dani, the aspiring writer who can't seem to put down a book--or a cocktail--long enough to open her laptop, has just been fired... again.In an effort to regroup, Kate, Vanessa, and Dani retreat to the New Jersey beach town where they once spent their summers. Emboldened by the seductive cadences of the shore, the women being to realize how much their lives, and friendships, have been shaped by the choices they made one fateful night on the beach eight years earlier--and the secrets that only now threaten to surface.

    She’s been written off as a Hollywood casualty by almost everyone, including her own mother. But handsome superstar Spencer Rome has her back. So does an uncompromising stranger determined to start Chase at square one and help her pull her future into focus. If Chase is willing.Life coach Olivia Han is devoted to “adulting” boot camp therapy. It’s not just her professional specialty, though—it’s also one way to avoid focusing on building a life of her own. To escape the pressures of Tinseltown, the two women head to Olivia’s cabin in the wilds of Northern California. There they discover a place in need of TLC. As they work together to rehab the once-charming cabin, they create a refuge where Chase can come to terms with her unsettled past, and where Olivia has an unexpected reckoning with her own troubling history.For two women doing damage control, this is a time for second chances—in life, in finding love, in forgiving family, and in an emerging friendship that might be exactly what each of them needs to heal.

    Set in Miami from the late '60s to the 1990s, Stiltsville is a sweeping journey seen through the eyes of one woman as she experiences love, motherhood, friendship, hurricanes, racial tension, and finally, a tragic death in slow motion.In her debut novel, Daniel describes the experiences of three generations in one family whose spiritual heart is centered in a modest bungalow built a few feet above the water. When Frances meets and marries Dennis, she learns to live her life on the water, from bay to ocean to everglade to bayou. She navigates through it all; infidelity, empty-nest syndrome, and debilitating illness; sometimes with grace and humor, sometimes with anger and bitterness, but always with the same people by her side.Daniel excels in capturing the flavor and decadence of Miami as it became a multicultural hotbed. In Stiltsville, she has woven factual events into Frances's life from a tumultuous period that witnessed racial beatings, the cocaine wars, and Hurricane Andrew. The result is a riveting novel filled with pathos.

    And it does. She loses her job and her best friend (who proclaims his unrequited love for her). And her mother, who deserted the family seventeen years ago, returns, sending Carly into a serious tilt. Convinced it's the quilt's fault, Carly races down to the small artists' community of Bilby, Arizona, to confront its maker, and ends up renting a cabin from her. Carly even starts to enjoy her reimagined life, until her old life comes calling. Now Carly has to decide what parts of each world she wants to patchwork in...and how much she's willing to leave to fate.

    Is there really room for something as unpredictable as love? Oliver Clock has everything arranged just so. A steady job running the family funeral parlour. A fridge stocked with ready meals. A drawer full of colour-coded socks. A plan (of sorts) to stay trim enough for a standard-sized coffin. And in florist Marie, he’s even found the love of his life—not that she’s aware of it.When a terrible tragedy takes Marie out of his life but leaves him with her private journal, he discovers too late that she secretly loved him back. Faced now with an empty love life, a family funeral business in trouble, a fast-approaching fortieth birthday and a notebook of resolutions he’s never achieved, Oliver resolves to open himself up to love—and all the mess that comes along with it.But, with a habit of burying his feelings, can he learn to embrace his lovability and find the woman who will make him feel whole?

    She’s got enough complications without getting caught in the middle of a stick-up in a gas station mini-mart and falling in love with a great wall of a man named William Ashe, who willingly steps between the armed robber and her son.Shandi doesn’t know that her blond god Thor has his own complications. When he looked down the barrel of that gun he believed it was destiny: It’s been one year to the day since a tragic act of physics shattered his universe. But William doesn’t define destiny the way other people do. A brilliant geneticist who believes in science and numbers, destiny to him is about choice.Now, he and Shandi are about to meet their so-called destinies head on, in a funny, charming, and poignant novel about science and miracles, secrets and truths, faith and forgiveness,; about a virgin birth, a sacrifice, and a resurrection; about falling in love, and learning that things aren’t always what they seem—or what we hope they will be. It’s a novel about discovering what we want and ultimately finding what we need

    J. Fikry, the irascible owner, is about to discover just what that truly means.A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. His wife has died, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. Slowly but surely, he is isolating himself from all the people of Alice Island—from Lambiase, the well-intentioned police officer who’s always felt kindly toward Fikry; from Ismay, his sister-in-law who is hell-bent on saving him from his dreary self; from Amelia, the lovely and idealistic (if eccentric) Knightley Press sales rep who keeps on taking the ferry over to Alice Island, refusing to be deterred by A.J.’s bad attitude. Even the books in his store have stopped holding pleasure for him. These days, A.J. can only see them as a sign of a world that is changing too rapidly.And then a mysterious package appears at the bookstore. It’s a small package, but large in weight. It’s that unexpected arrival that gives A. J. Fikry the opportunity to make his life over, the ability to see everything anew. It doesn’t take long for the locals to notice the change overcoming A.J.; or for that determined sales rep, Amelia, to see her curmudgeonly client in a new light; or for the wisdom of all those books to become again the lifeblood of A.J.’s world; or for everything to twist again into a version of his life that he didn’t see coming. As surprising as it is moving, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is an unforgettable tale of transformation and second chances, an irresistible affirmation of why we read, and why we love.

    At the age of sixty she adopted an infant, and now that she’s dead, Hannah must raise the child. But fighting the effects of severe burns sustained in childhood may be all that Hannah can manage. Defined and alienated by both emotional and physical scars, Hannah fears that she might be abusive and crazy, too. Burden of Breath alternates between the intervening years since the fire and the present as Hannah struggles to separate from her mother’s crippling influence - even from the grave. Anger and isolation force Hannah to confront her emotional and physical damage, and she transforms her life in ways she could never have imagined.

    A harried working mother who’s so busy taking care of her husband and twins, she doesn’t even realize she’s had a heart attack.Surprised to discover that her recuperation seems to be an imposition on those who rely on her, Maribeth does the unthinkable: she packs a bag and leaves. But, as is often the case, once we get where we’re going we see our lives from a different perspective. Far from the demands of family and career and with the help of liberating new friendships, Maribeth is able to own up to secrets she has been keeping from herself and those she loves.With bighearted characters--husbands, wives, friends, and lovers--who stumble and trip, grow and forgive, Leave Me is about facing the fears we’re all running from. Gayle Forman is a dazzling observer of human nature. She has written an irresistible novel that confronts the ambivalence of modern motherhood head on and asks, what happens when a grown woman runs away from home?