The Secret Life of Prince Charming


Deb Caletti - 2009
    One solid thing.Quinn is surrounded by women who have had their hearts broken. Between her mother, her aunt, and her grandmother, Quinn hears nothing but cautionary tales. She tries to be an optimist -- after all, she's the dependable one, the girl who never makes foolish choices. But when she is abruptly and unceremoniously dumped, Quinn starts to think maybe there really are no good men.It doesn't help that she's gingerly handling a renewed relationship with her formerly absent father. He's a little bit of a lot of things: charming, selfish, eccentric, lazy...but he's her dad, and Quinn's just happy to have him around again. Until she realizes how horribly he's treated the many women in his life, how he's stolen more than just their hearts. Determined to, for once, take action in her life, Quinn joins forces with the half sister she's never met and the little sister she'll do anything to protect. Together, they set out to right her father's wrongs...and in doing so, begin to uncover what they're really looking for: the truth.Once again, Deb Caletti has created a motley crew of lovably flawed characters who bond over the shared experiences of fear, love, pain, and joy -- in other words, real life.

Muriel Avenue Sluts


Maggie Hasbrouck - 2016
    When Jules turns eighteen she‘ll follow in her mother’s footsteps and begin training to join the exclusive world of Philadelphia’s infamous Muriel Avenue Sluts. Anyway, that’s the plan. But when Jules’s best friend Anna reveals that she’s being abused by one of Muriel Avenue’s gentleman clients, Jules’s world is knocked off its bearings. After a routine haircut and shave, Anna’s abuser falls to his death from a second-story balcony—and Jules is just one of two people who knows exactly what happened. To complicate matters, Jules dives head first into a friendship with the daughter of the dead man. Greta’s a train wreck: she’s charming, unpredictable, and has one too many questions about Muriel Avenue. Then, Jules puts all of Muriel Avenue at risk with an ill-timed slip of the tongue and she finds herself wanted by the FBI. Running from everything she’s ever cared about, all Jules wants is to get back to the people she loves.Complete with duct tape, wasp spray, and a healthy dose of sexual tension, MURIEL AVENUE SLUTS is a coming of age story with a dark edge that explores what it means to take care of the people you love.

After the Fall


Julie Cohen - 2015
    However, the longer she stays with Jo and Lydia, the more they start to feel like a real family. But each of the three women is keeping secrets from the others that threaten to destroy the lives they’ve come to know.Honor’s secret threatens to rob her of the independence she’s guarded ferociously for eighty years.Jo’s secret could destroy the “normal” family life she’s fought so hard to build and maintain.Lydia’s secret could bring her love―or the loss of everything that matters most to her.One summer’s day, grandmother, mother and daughter’s secrets will be forced out in the open in a single dramatic moment that leaves them all asking: is there such a thing as second chances?

The Summer I Became a Nerd


Leah Rae Miller - 2013
    But inside, Maddie spends more time agonizing over what will happen in the next issue of her favorite comic book than planning pep rallies with her squad. That she’s a nerd hiding in a popular girl's body isn’t just unknown, it's anti-known. And she needs to keep it that way. Summer is the only time Maddie lets her real self out to play, but when she slips up and the adorkable guy behind the local comic shop’s counter uncovers her secret, she’s busted. Before she can shake a pom-pom, Maddie’s whisked into Logan’s world of comic conventions, live-action role-playing, and first-person-shooter video games. And she loves it. But the more she denies who she really is, the deeper her lies become…and the more she risks losing Logan forever.

Why We Broke Up


Daniel Handler - 2011
    I'm writing it in this letter, the whole truth of why it happened.Min Green and Ed Slaterton are breaking up, so Min is writing Ed a letter and giving him a box. Inside the box is why they broke up. Two bottle caps, a movie ticket, a folded note, a box of matches, a protractor, books, a toy truck, a pair of ugly earrings, a comb from a motel room, and every other item collected over the course of a giddy, intimate, heartbreaking relationship. Item after item is illustrated and accounted for, and then the box, like a girlfriend, will be dumped.

Past Perfect


Leila Sales - 2011
    But when Chelsea shows up for her summer job at Essex Historical Colonial Village (yes, really), it turns out Ezra’s working there too. Which makes moving on and forgetting Ezra a lot more complicated…even when Chelsea starts falling for someone new. Maybe Chelsea should have known better than to think that a historical reenactment village could help her escape her past. But with Ezra all too present, and her new crush seeming all too off limits, all Chelsea knows is that she’s got a lot to figure out about love. Because those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it….

Textrovert


Lindsey Summers - 2017
    😞 Just her luck that it belongs to Talon, a totally arrogant jock 🏈 who’s just left for football camp—with her phone. Keeley doesn’t know him, but they’ll need to rely on each other to forward their messages for an entire week.Talon is so full of himself, but Keeley quickly discovers he’s funny, too—at least his texts are. 😅 And he listens to Keeley—which is more than anyone else does. Texting Talon, she can be more than just the quiet twin sister of a popular boy. Texting Talon, she can be the outgoing person she’s always wanted to be. Soon the two are falling for each other, hard.But when true identities are revealed and secrets are exposed, will Keeley’s feelings stay the same?

The Last Dance


Kiki Hamilton - 2013
     Kellen Peterson, the gorgeous star quarterback of the Griffin High football team, seems to have it all. Until the night of the Homecoming game, when Kellen gets tackled and suffers a traumatic brain injury - an injury that changes his life - including his ability to walk, talk and throw a football. Ivy Ly is a senior and counting down the days until she can escape to college. Though her parents have big plans for her to be a doctor, Ivy is afraid to tell them she'd rather pursue music as a career. Ivy's best friend, Mira, is obsessed with Kellen. When Ivy is asked to tutor the injured football player upon his return to school, she thinks it's the perfect opportunity for Mira to get to know him better - but sparks fly - in more ways than one...

Angel


Danielle Carriere - 2019
    However, Angel’s plans are disrupted when she becomes stranded in an unfamiliar town. With no means to leave and no place to stay, Angel finds aid in an unexpected place: Nathan, a childhood acquaintance with scars of his own.All nineteen-year-old Nathan wants is to leave every memory of his father far, far behind. But when Nathan’s path leads him to Angel, he begins to realize that his father’s influence has reached further than he could ever have imagined.As Nathan and Angel face the prejudices of the townspeople together, their tenuous friendship begins to grow into something more. However, when Nathan’s father returns, Angel and Nathan must decide whether they are willing fight for the life they’ve created for themselves, or whether they will once again leave everything they love—including each other—behind.

The Juliet Club


Suzanne Harper - 2008
    . . Shakespeare . . . but no romance?Kate Sanderson inherited her good sense from her mother, a disciplined law professor, and her admiration for the Bard from her father, a passionate Shakespeare scholar. When she gets dumped, out of the blue, for the Practically Perfect Ashley Lawson, she vows never to fall in love again. From now on she will control her own destiny, and every decision she makes will be highly reasoned and rational. She thinks Shakespeare would have approved.So when she is accepted to a summer Shakespeare symposium in Verona, Italy, Kate sees it as the ideal way to get over her heartbreak once and for all. She'll lose herself in her studies, explore ancient architecture, and eat plenty of pasta and gelato. (Plus, she'll be getting college credit for it—another goal accomplished!) But can even completely logical Kate resist the romance of living in a beautiful villa in the city where those star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet met and died for each other? Especially when the other Shakespeare Scholars—in particular Giacomo, with his tousled brown hair, expressive dark eyes, and charming ways—try hard to break her protective shell?"In fair Verona, where we lay our scene . . . "

Celia at 39: A Novel


Jason Pomerance - 2019
    She has a successful career selling pharmaceuticals. She's about to marry her longtime fiance, a doctor. Oh, sure, her mother and her two sisters drive her nuts, but that's normal, right? Then a package unexpectedly shows up at her door -- the address is correct, but it was mailed nearly forty years earlier, to another woman, whose whereabouts are now a mystery. Inside is a curious old cookbook, along with a sealed note from a daughter to her mother. Celia decides to deliver the package to its rightful recipient. Instead she finds the woman's grandson, Dante Zebulon, the pitmaster of a small barbecue joint nestled in the Appalachians, a man who literally plays with fire, and who juggles cooking classic Southern barbecue with raising a young daughter alone. When the note reveals a long-kept family secret -- and when sparks fly between Celia and Dante -- it's not just Celia's life that gets turned upside down. Soon the future for all becomes a question mark.

The Last Book Party


Karen Dukess - 2019
    With her professional ambitions floundering, Eve jumps at the chance to attend an early summer gathering at the Cape Cod home of famed New Yorker writer Henry Grey and his poet wife, Tillie. Dazzled by the guests and her burgeoning crush on the hosts’ artistic son, Eve lands a new job as Henry Grey’s research assistant and an invitation to Henry and Tillie’s exclusive and famed "Book Party"— where attendees dress as literary characters. But by the night of the party, Eve discovers uncomfortable truths about her summer entanglements and understands that the literary world she so desperately wanted to be a part of is not at all what it seems.A page-turning, coming-of-age story, written with a lyrical sense of place and a profound appreciation for the sustaining power of books, The Last Book Party shows what happens when youth and experience collide and what it takes to find your own voice.

I'll Eat When I'm Dead


Barbara Bourland - 2017
    They're smart, stylish, and sophisticated, even the one found dead in her office.When stylish Hillary Whitney dies alone in a locked, windowless conference room at the offices of RAGE Fashion Book, her death is initially ruled an unfortunate side effect of the unrelenting pressure to be thin. But Hillary's best friend and fellow RAGE editor Catherine Ono knows her friend's dieting wasn't a capital P problem. If beauty could kill, it'd take more than that.When two months later, a cryptic note in Hillary's handwriting ends up in the office of the NYPD and the case is reopened, Det. Mark Hutton is led straight into the glamorous world of RAGE and into the life of hot-headed and fiercely fabulous Cat, who insists on joining the investigation. Surrounded by a supporting cast of party girls, Type A narcissists and half- dead socialites, Cat and her colleague Bess Bonner are determined to solve the case and achieve sartorial perfection. But their amateur detective work has disastrous results, and the two ingenues are caught in a web of drugs, sex, lies and moisturizer that changes their lives forever. Viciously funny, this sharp and satirical take on the politics of women's bodies and women's work is an addictive debut novel that dazzles with style and savoire faire.

It Takes A Village To Kill Your Husband


Jethro Collins - 2012
    Hollis Whitney is a successful and fabulous HGTV hostess on the brink of turning 40. She also happens to be madly in love with her carpenter even though she is married to sleazy movie director Frank Fielder. When Hollis discovers that Frank is diddling his latest (and much younger) leading lady, she sets out on a mission to kill him off. Her bitchy Beverly Hills friends catch wind of her plan and insist on helping her plot out the perfect murder. Together the women use their power and connections to help Hollis dig the hole that will bury Frank – figuratively and literally. What follows is a tale of the unique skills each woman brings to the plan and a moving story about long-lost love, finding yourself, onion rings and the importance of pink. Killing your husband could just be the secret to a happy ending.

The Christmas Star: A Love Story


Robert Tate Miller - 2017
    In deep despair, he turns to drinking to drive away the pain, but he only succeeds in driving away his wife. His marriage shattered, his family gone, Paul now despises Christmas.But can the holiday he so detests hold a miraculous surprise? After an accident in which he loses consciousness, he wakes up in the company of the shepherds who will soon travel to Bethlehem to see the newborn Christ in the manger. Can Paul find salvation on the night that forever changed the world? Can he discover the true spirit of Christmas?