But as a single father battling demons of his own, Noel can’t do it alone. Fortunately, he has a competent, caring network of friends, family and neighbors: Lisa, his unlucky-in-love classmate, who moves in with him to help him care for little Frankie around the clock; his American cousin, Emily, always there with a pep talk; the newly retired Dr. Hat, with more time on his hands than he knows what to do with; Dr. Declan and Fiona and their baby son, Frankie’s first friend; and many eager babysitters, including old friends Signora and Aidan and Frankie’s doting grandparents, Josie and Charles. But not everyone is pleased with the unconventional arrangement, especially a nosy social worker, Moira, who is convinced that Frankie would be better off in a foster home. Now it’s up to Noel to persuade her that everyone in town has something special to offer when it comes to minding Frankie.

    . . Hays is a superb comic writer, an irrepressible jokester who turns this epic camping trip into a cracked, sitcom Walden . . . Profound.” —SFGATE After Daniel Hays and his father built a twenty-five-foot boat and sailed it around Cape Horn, he thought he'd finally put his wanderlust to rest. He went back to school, bought a house, took a job, got married. But as it turned out, in the real world Daniel Hays felt lost. So he took his love for the sea and his need to escape civilization and pushed it further: he bought an island off the coast of Nova Scotia; built a tiny house; packed up his wife and stepson, two dogs, and three boatloads of supplies; and moved there. This is the story of fulfilling a fantasy: to live by your own rules and your own wits. And Daniel Hays, as readers of My Old Man and the Sea will remember, is well equipped to do both. He generates electricity from solar power and a terrifying windmill, funnels rainwater for their showers, creates a toilet seat out of a whale vertebra, strings their bed up on pulleys so that by day it can be lifted out of the way. For him, every morning is a wonder and every storm a blood-coursing thrill. But while Daniel loves this permanent boy's life, his wife longs for the life they left behind, and his spirited stepson is feeling isolated. Soon, their Swiss Family Robinson existence becomes a vision only Daniel can see. Funny, tender, and fascinating, filled with the details of an unconventional life, this is the story of how the Hays family lived on Whale Island, and how, finally, they had to leave.

    It is up to Penny Leighton to come up with a plan to save it. Trevay soon finds itself at the centre of the universe when A-listers arrive to take part in a charity season at the theatre. The play throws out a chance to Jess Tate, girlfriend to TV heartthrob Ryan Roberts. His career is on the rise while hers remains resolutely in the doldrums. But when opportunity comes calling, it isn't just her career prospects that are about to change ...

    She's wondering why they're not engaged yet. Michael is going to his fiancee's parents' home for an engagement party he doesn't want. A states' prosecutor, he's about to try the biggest case of his career, he hates the distraction, and he's having doubts about the relationship. They sit together on the plane, and discover they're on the same flight coming back. When the weekend is a disaster for each of them, they bond on the plane ride home. But life is full of complications, including their exes, who don't want to let go, and when Michael's trial turns dangerous, the two must confront what they value most in life... Praise for Line of Scrimmage: "I will definitely be reading more Marie Force." -Revisiting the Moon's Library "It was a book that made me laugh as well as cry. The three-dimensional characters were so vivid... hands down, this is the best romance I've read this year." -J. Kaye's Book Blog "With its humor and endearing characters, Force's charming novel will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers, reaching far beyond sports fans." -Shelley Mosley, Booklist

    Best friends since Catholic grade school, they now find themselves, in their mid-thirties, at the crossroads of life and love. Ellis, recently fired from a job she gave everything to, is rudderless and now beginning to question the choices she's made over the past decade of her life. Julia--whose caustic wit covers up her wounds--has a man who loves her and is offering her the world, but she can't hide from how deeply insecure she feels about her looks, her brains, her life. And Dorie has just been shockingly betrayed by the man she loved and trusted the most in the world…though this is just the tip of the iceberg of her problems and secrets. A month in North Carolina's Outer Banks is just what they each of them needs.Ty Bazemore is their landlord, though he's hanging on to the rambling old beach house by a thin thread. After an inauspicious first meeting with Ellis, the two find themselves disturbingly attracted to one another, even as Ty is about to lose everything he's ever cared about.Maryn Shackleford is a stranger, and a woman on the run. Maryn needs just a few things in life: no questions, a good hiding place, and a new identity. Ellis, Julia, and Dorie can provide what Maryn wants; can they also provide what she needs?Mary Kay Andrews' novel is the story of five people questioning everything they ever thought they knew about life. Five people on a journey that will uncover their secrets and point them on the path to forgiveness. Five people who each need a sea change, and one month in a summer rental that might just give it to them.Summer Rental is one of Library Journal's Best Women's Fiction Books of 2011

    In that instant, the lives of those who live and work there are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep the child . . . while Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to help him. "Blessings" explores how the secrets of the past affect decisions and lives in the present; what makes a person or a life legitimate or illegitimate and who decides; and the unique resources people find in themselves and in a community. This is a powerful novel of love, redemption, and personal change by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer about whom "The Washington Post Book World" said, "Quindlen knows that all the things we ever will be can be found in some forgotten fragment of family."

    Acclaimed for her lucid and compassionate exploration of the American family, Roxana Robinson sets her new work on familiar terrain—New York City and the Adirondacks—but with Sweetwater she transcends the particulars of the domestic sphere with a broader, more encompassing vision. In this poignant account of a young widow and her second marriage, Robinson expands her scope to include the larger natural world as well as the smaller, more intimate one of the home.Isabel Green’s marriage to Paul Simmons, after the death of her first husband, marks her reconnection to life—a venture she’s determined will succeed. But this proves to be harder than she’d anticipated, and the challenges of starting afresh seem more complicated in adulthood. Staying at the Simmons lodge for their annual summer visit, Isabel finds herself entering into a set of familial complexities. She struggles to understand her new husband, his elderly, difficult parents and his brother, whose relationship with Paul seems oddly fraught. Furthermore, her second marriage begins to cast into sharp relief the troubling echoes of her first. Isabel’s professional life plays a part as well: a passionate environmental advocate, she is aware of the tensions within the mountain landscape itself during a summer of spectacular beauty and ominous drought.In her cool, elegant prose, Robinson gracefully delivers a plot that is complex, surprising and ultimately wrenching in its impact. As the strands of family are woven tightly and inevitably together, and as the past painfully informs the present, the vivid backdrop of the physical world provides its own eloquent dynamic. Sweetwater is a stunning achievement by a writer at the peak of her craft.

    As she mourns the recent death of her mother, she doesn’t realize that on Christmas Eve she is about to have the most extraordinary day—and night—of her life. After bravely facing down mean-spirited classmates and rejection at school, Madeleine doggedly searches for Philadelphia's legendary jazz club The Cat's Pajamas, where she’s determined to make her on-stage debut. On the same day, her fifth grade teacher Sarina Greene, who’s just moved back to Philly after a divorce, is nervously looking forward to a dinner party that will reunite her with an old high school crush, afraid to hope that sparks might fly again. And across town at The Cat's Pajamas, club owner Lorca discovers that his beloved haunt may have to close forever, unless someone can find a way to quickly raise the $30,000 that would save it. As these three lost souls search for love, music and hope on the snow-covered streets of Philadelphia, together they will discover life’s endless possibilities over the course of one magical night. A vivacious, charming and moving debut, 2 Am At The Cat's Pajamas will capture your heart and have you laughing out loud.

    As Fallon turns forty years old, the IRA needs his help again, this time to break Patrick Rogan, the leader of IRA Ulster, out of prison before he is executed.   But not all is as it seems. When a newly freed Rogan commits murder in the name of a ruthless IRA sect, Fallon’s rescue mission will become a deadly clash between those who wish to save Ireland, and those who seek to destroy it.

    One night at a cocktail party Mary meets Frank Renzo, a reporter who has covered stories from the fall of Dienbienphu to the Emmett Till murder trial in Mississippi. Slowly, reluctantly, they fall in love. Their ensuing affair, in all its desperate elation, plays out against a backdrop that ranges from the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village to the smoke-filled rooms of the Kennedy campaign. A romance in the grand tradition that is also a neon-lit portrait of America at its apogee, On Green Dolphin Street is Sebastian Faulks at the peak of his powers.

    A hundred years ago, Amina would have been called a mail-order bride. But this is an arranged marriage for the twenty-first century: Amina is wooed by - and woos - George Stillman online. For Amina, George offers a chance for a new life and a different kind of happiness than she might find back home. For George, Amina is a woman who doesn't play games. But each of them is hiding something: someone from the past they thought they could leave behind. It is only when they put an ocean between them - and Amina returns to Bangladesh - that she and George find out if their secrets will tear them apart, or if they can build a future together. The Newlyweds is a surprising, suspenseful story about the exhilarations - and real-life complications - of getting, and staying, married. It stretches across continents, generations, and plains of emotion. What has always set Nell Freudenberger apart is the sly, gimlet eye she turns on collisions of all kinds - sexual, cultural, familial. With The Newlyweds, she has found her perfect subject for that vision, and characters to match. She reveals Amina's heart and mind, capturing both her new American reality and the home she cannot forget, with seamless authenticity, empathy, and grace. At once revelatory and affecting, The Newlyweds is a stunning achievement.

    Sheltered by her single mother and educated in an exclusive private school in Detroit, Grace was not ready for the harsh realities of an unforgiving world. Grace's naiveti coupled with her desire to experience life on her own terms leads her down a path of emotional devastation and physical abuse. Through a chance encounter Grace meets Mike, a successful design artist who introduces her to a relationship very different from her usual one-night-stands and affairs with married men. Things take a turn for the worse however when Grace's roommate walks in on her and her married personal trainer in their apartment. This betrayal tears apart Mike and Grace's romance and shatters the trust and friendship between Grace and Trina. In the midst of torn relationships and a life-shattering loss, Grace is left with no one to turn to except the God she thought had long since abandoned her.

    It doesn't take long before she realizes the business involved is only a smokescreen and she is the ultimate commodity.Excerpt:Jenna sat in first class and fiddled with the platinum band on her left ring finger. She watched David sitting next to her from the corner of her eye. His hand still held hers loosely even in sleep, his fingers laced between hers in a hold of ownership, a hold of possession that he had rarely allowed her away from the entire day.They were approaching the Greater Cincinnati airport and her mind raced over the day that had just passed. It was almost midnight, and everything had been accomplished in less than twenty-four hours. When they left his house that morning, the first thing they did was meet with his lawyer, and she had signed a pre-nuptial agreement. Then they had left to board a flight to Vegas, and the minute they had gotten there, he hustled her into a twenty-four hour wedding chapel. They were married quickly without benefit of rings, but he found a jewelry store when they left the chapel and had one on her finger with what to her now seemed to be an obscene lack of consideration and time. Leaving the jewelers, they went into a hotel restaurant and had a quick meal, and her mind shied away from what had happened next. They hadn't packed for an overnight stay, and she hadn't understood why he checked into the hotel after they ate. Her stomach had been tied in knots through the meal anyway, and apprehension and nerves screamed in her bloodstream as he pulled her by the hand up the elevators to a room.The minute the door had clicked shut, he turned to her and began unbuttoning her blouse. Panic attacked her and she put her fingers over his to stop him. "What are y-you doing?"He brushed her hands aside and continued to strip her. "Consummating the marriage." His voice was harsh."Why? Can't w-we wait?""No. I want it consummated now."Disturbed by what they were doing and his reasons for it, she tried to slow him down and lighten the atmosphere. "Why?" Her voice was soft, trying to soothe him. "I'm not going anywhere."His eyes lifted from her buttons and tangled with hers. "No. You can bet your ass you're not going anywhere." His voice dripped ruthless possession.Her pulse went spinning as he unhooked her bra and pushed it out of his way. He pulled her over to the king sized bed, and unhooked her skirt. "Step out of it."Her mind in a daze at the speed of his movements, she stepped from her clothes and moved onto the bed. He quickly stripped and pushed her legs apart and climbed on top of her. Her heartbeat going wild, she spoke in a whisper of defiance. "Just for two years."It was a mistake.His nostrils flared at her words and he grabbed her wrists and lifted them over her head. Holding her captive, he began to push into her. He stretched her completely, transferred her wrists to one strong hand, and lifted her face to his with the other. "When I'm good and goddamn ready. And not a day before."

    Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family. Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero of Helen Simonson's wondrous debut. Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, Major Pettigrew is one of the most indelible characters in contemporary fiction, and from the very first page of this remarkable novel he will steal your heart.The Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: honor, duty, decorum, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But then his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as the permanent foreigner. Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition?

    Laura Moriarty keeps getting better and better." -- Jodi Picoult, author of Handle with Care In While I'm Falling, Laura Moriarty presents a compelling depiction of how one young woman's life changes when her family breaks up for good. Ever since her parents announced that they're getting divorced, Veronica has been falling. Hard. A junior in college, she has fallen in love. She has fallen behind in her difficult coursework. She hates her job as counselor at the dorm, and she longs for the home that no longer exists. When an attempt to escape the pressure, combined with bad luck, lands her in a terrifying situation, a shaken Veronica calls her mother for help -- only to find her former foundation too preoccupied to offer any assistance at all. But Veronica only gets to feel hurt for so long. Her mother shows up at the dorm with a surprising request -- and with the elderly family dog in tow. Boyfriend complications ensue, along with her father's sudden interest in dating. Veronica soon finds herself with a new set of problems, and new questions about love and independence. Darkly humorous, beautifully written, and filled with crystalline observations about how families fall apart, While I'm Falling takes a deep look at the relationship between a daughter and a mother when one is trying to grow up and the other is trying to stay afloat.