More Like Her


Liza Palmer - 2011
    More Like Her is the story of a seemingly perfect woman who’s the envy of her friends, neighbors, and co-workers…until the life of the object of their jealousy spectacularly, unexpectedly, and disastrously explodes. A novel of secrets, disappointments, false impressions—and what really goes on behind those suburban picket fences—More Like Her is ultimately about facing reality and appreciating everything that life has to offer.

Helter Skelter


Della Galton - 2007
    Tragedy forces her to flee but when she discovers that her husband, a property developer, is cheating on her she returns. But the fair has gone, the land, brought by her husband, is now covered by luxury flats. Going back can be painful but this is just the start of the Helter Skelter for Vanessa. While she feels her life is spiralling ever downwards, there are the strong arms of a passion from her past to catch her at the end.

Second Time Around


Beth Kendrick - 2010
    They laugh, reminisce, and commiserate about their soul-sucking jobs. Maybe they should have listened to everyone who warned them to study something “practical.”Then an unexpected windfall arrives—one million dollars, to be exact—with the stipulation that they use it to jump-start their new careers. Almost overnight, a professor, a bartender, a copywriter, and an administrative assistant reinvent themselves as a novelist, an event planner, a pastry chef, and a bed-and-breakfast owner. But the changes in their professional roles create unexpected turbulence in their personal lives, and soon the secrets and scandals from their past start to resurface. For anyone who has ever wondered “What if?,” this engaging novel provides a sweet, funny look at friendship, romance, and second chances.

Picking Up the Pieces


Mary Sheepshanks - 1997
    But when her daughter Joanna's husband walks out, and Joanna instantly assumes that Kate will step into the supporting Granny role while she goes career and man-hunting, Kate realizes it is time to step outside her family's preconceived expectations--with devastating results. What follows is a delightful story of the relationships and unspoken power struggles between four generations of women.

The Penny Tree


Holly Kennedy - 2007
    The paper's editor refuses to name names, but the ads continue to appear. And when the story breaks, Annie finds herself in the national spotlight. Now, for the first time in years, Annie is beginning to see that joy might be possible even in the midst of hard times-and that the life she's led, along with the people she's loved, might still show her the way.

Wonder Women


Rosie Fiore - 2013
    Then she hits on a brilliant idea – a kids’ clothing shop with a twist – and is thrilled when it really takes off. When husband Lee offers to quit his job to look after the family while her business grows, it seems a godsend – but will their marriage stand the test of reversing their roles?Jo soon recruits Holly and Mel to help her in the shop. Designer Holly’s high-flying career has come crashing down and she’s moved back home – but is she ready to manage a major family crisis? Meanwhile, Mel worries her teenage daughter Serena is going off the rails. Is finding out more worth risking her daughter’s trust?At the crossroads of their lives, friendship could be the only the thing keeping these wonder women strong.

Sex and the City


Candace Bushnell - 1996
    In essays drawn from her witty and sometimes brutally candid column in the New York Observer, Candace Bushnell introduces us to the young and beautiful who travel in packs from parties to bars to clubs. Meet "Carrie," the quintessential young writer looking for love in all the wrong places..."Mr. Big," the business tycoon who drifts from one relationship to another..."Samantha Jones," the fortyish, successful, "testosterone woman" who uses sex like a man...not to mention "Psycho Moms," "Bicycle Boys," "International Crazy Girls," and the rest of the New Yorkers who have inspired one of the most watched TV series of our time. You've seen them on HBO, now read the book that started it all...

The Sisters Café


Carolyn Brown - 2013
    She's taken step one and gotten engaged to a reliable man, but she's beginning to question their relationship. Does he really love her, or is she just arm candy for his political career? Why is her future mother-in-law getting increasingly hostile? Worse, why does he stand up for his mother when she says those awful things, instead of protecting her? Cathy is full of self-doubt. Both of her options—going through with the wedding or breaking off her engagement—are beginning to look like a nightmare either way. She knows her friends will back her up, but she's the one who has to make a decision that's going to tear her apart.

All Summer Long


Dorothea Benton Frank - 2016
    Dorothea Benton Frank s magical stories take us deep into the heart of her beloved Carolina Lowcountry. In her novels, this lush landscape comes alive in all its vibrancy and color. She ignites all of our senses with her vivid descriptions of landscape and atmosphere. In her novels you hear the ocean washing the shore on different islands so profoundly that you can nearly hear the sea gulls squawking, too. This is a story of people whose lives are changing a southern gentleman returning home to lead a more peaceful life and his talented New York wife who is not quite sure she is ready to make the transition. They are moving north to south, fast pace versus slow pace, downsizing. And while they are doing this, they are getting glimpses into other people s lives over the course of a summer, holidays that will amuse, shock and transform them. This irresistible story is home to captivating characters as funny, complicated, and real as our best friends husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, friends and family who wrestle with the complexities, pain, and joys familiar to us all. Finally, we ll come to recognize the face of love, the kind that deepens and endures but only because one woman makes a tremendous leap of faith. That leap changes them all.

Harvesting the Heart


Jodi Picoult - 1993
    Now, having left her father behind in Chicago for dreams of art school and marriage to an ambitious young doctor, she finds herself with a child of her own. But her mother's absence and shameful memories of her past force her to doubt whether she could ever be capable of bringing joy and meaning into the life of her child, gifts her own mother never gave.Harvesting the Heart is written with astonishing clarity and evocative detail, convincing in its depiction of emotional pain, love, and vulnerability, and recalls the writing of Alice Hoffman and Kristin Hannah. Out of Paige's struggle to find wholeness, Jodi Picoult crafts an absorbing novel peopled by richly drawn characters, and explores motherhood with a power and depth only she is capable of.“A brilliant, moving examination of motherhood, brimming with detail and emotion.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch“Jodi Picoult explores the fragile ground of ambivalent motherhood in her lush second novel. This story belongs to… the lucky reader.” —The New York Times Book Review

Falling Uphill


Wendy Nelson Tokunaga - 2011
    A bright, but slightly absent-minded anthropology teacher at a small Michigan college, Candace is all set to leave for Los Angeles to conduct research on 1960s TV star Pamela Parrish—America’s Sitcom Sweetheart—for her Master’s thesis on television and female gender roles. But after discovering that Ruth Fenton is a long lost relative, she’s first off to San Francisco for her memorial service where she meets a crazy(?) old lady who claims Pamela Parrish didn’t commit suicide like everybody says—she was murdered. Now Candace has to get to the bottom of it, all while fighting the nagging feeling that her long-time professor boyfriend back home is getting a little too close to one of his students, and at the same time wondering if new-found friend Brandon, a newspaper reporter and budding painter who lives on a hidden stairway street in the hills of San Francisco, is really the guy for her. It’s a funny, but moving, uphill climb for Candace who finds that things are rarely what they seem in the ups and downs of love or in discovering a surprising secret about her not-so-perfect mother, or unearthing the truth behind the death of America’s Sitcom Sweetheart.

Misfortune's Daughters


Joan Collins - 2005
    Beginning in the Golden Era of Hollywood, the beautiful and talented actress Laura Marlowe meets the young, dashing, and rich shipping magnate Nicholas Stephanopolis. After a whirlwind courtship, the two marry and move to the private Stephanopolis Island in the south of Greece. Yet heartache and tragedy soon find them and extend into the lives of their two very different but willful and ambitious daughters, Venetia and Atlanta. One is a beautiful and favored daughter who's bent on self-destruction; the other is a wallflower who buries herself in books and shies away from her privileged world. But both must confront the legacy and tragedy of the lives of their parents.Sweeping across almost 60 years and jetting from New York to Paris, Los Angeles, and Greece, Misfortune's Daughters is an irresistible, page-turning tale that reveals the glittering life of show business and the grittiness of the journalistic profession. Drawing on her own knowledge and experience, Collins takes the reader deep inside the exclusive gates of wealth and luxury, exposing dark secrets and forbidden desires as two young women vie to break free from their family's shadow and become independent women in their own right.

Kingston Court


Holly Kammier - 2015
    Samantha and Natalie are at a crossroads. Gorgeous, over-the-top Samantha, hides from her past by hanging her status and her happiness on her "perfect" husband. That is until she learns his secret. But she's not the only mother on the block struggling. Natalie, nurturing and careful, is thrust back into the workforce after her husband barely survives a near-fatal car accident. This fast-paced novel follows the lives of two dramatically different women who are faced with life-altering experiences. Death and misfortune in the span of a single year force these two women to either sink, or rediscover their inner strength and independence. Described as a modern day twist between Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives, Kingston Court is full of scandal, temptation, and all of life's juicy little secrets.*** When you finish, check out Kingtson Court's spin-off novels, Choosing Hope, and Lost Girl.

The Crossroads Cafe


Deborah Smith - 2006
    There she finds unexpected love and a new life with a man who lost his family in 9-11.

Sleeping Tigers


Holly Robinson - 2011
    When her life unravels after a breast cancer scare, Jordan decides to join her wildest childhood friend in San Francisco and track down her drifter brother, Cam, who harbors secrets of his own. When Cam suddenly flees the country, Jordan follows, determined to bring him home. Her journey takes her to the farthest reaches of majestic Nepal, where she encounters tests-and truths-about love and family that she never could have imagined. Funny, heartbreaking, and suspenseful, Sleeping Tigers reminds us all that sometimes it's better to follow your heart instead of a plan. "Sleeping Tigers is the kind of book you wish didn't have to end. Fast-moving and funny, loaded with sex, adventure, and characters who feel like your oldest friends, it takes the reader through fabulous, keenly-observed settings as it follows one woman on a brave journey of self-discovery. Robinson's prose crackles with wit and humanity - it brims with all the energy that's released when life and love are unleashed and allowed to roam. With wisdom to spare, Robinson shows how being honest and brave today can bring healing to the past and a new shape to the future. You won't be able to read this book without imagining all your favorite actors in the roles." Elisabeth Brink, author of Save Your Own