Someone Else's Fairytale


E.M. Tippetts - 2011
    It's the ideal fairytale... for most people. The last thing Chloe needs is public attention. It brings back dangers from the past that she's worked her whole life to escape.

Keeper of the Light


Diane Chamberlain - 1992
    Olivia Simon is on duty in the emergency room of North Carolina’s Outer Banks Hospital when a gunshot victim is brought in. Midway through the desperate effort to save the young woman’s life, Olivia realizes who she is—Annie O’Neill. The woman Olivia’s husband, Paul, is in love with.When Annie dies on the operating table, she leaves behind three other victims. Alec O’Neill, who thought he had the perfect marriage. Paul, whose fixation on Annie is unshakable. And Olivia, who is desperate to understand the woman who destroyed her marriage.Now they are left with unanswered questions about who Annie really was. And about the secrets she kept hidden so well.Originally published in 2011

Digging In


Loretta Nyhan - 2018
    Since his death, she’s been sleepwalking through life, barely holding on for the sake of her teenage son. Her house is a wreck, the grass is overrun with weeds, and she’s at risk of losing her job. As Paige stares at her neglected lawn, she knows she’s hit rock bottom. So she does something entirely unexpected: she begins to dig.As the hole gets bigger, Paige decides to turn her entire yard into a vegetable garden. The neighbors in her tidy gated community are more than a little alarmed. Paige knows nothing about gardening, and she’s boldly flouting neighborhood-association bylaws. But with the help of new friends, a charming local cop, and the transformative power of the soil, Paige starts to see potential in the chaos of her life. Something big is beginning to take root—both in her garden and in herself.

Cocktails for Three


Madeleine Wickham - 2000
    Here, they chat about what's new at The Londoner, the glossy fashion magazine where they all work, and everything else that's going on in their lives. Or almost everything. Beneath the girl talk and the laughter, each of the three has a secret. And when a chance encounter at the cocktail bar sets in motion an extraordinary chain of events, each one will find their biggest secret revealed.In Cocktails for Three, Madeleine Wickham combines her trademark humor with remarkable insight to create an edgy, romantic tale of secrets, strangers, and a splash of scandal.

Wife 22


Melanie Gideon - 2008
    . . and finding herself again . . . in the middle of her life.Maybe it was those extra five pounds I’d gained. Maybe it was because I was about to turn the same age my mother was when I lost her. Maybe it was because after almost twenty years of marriage my husband and I seemed to be running out of things to say to each other.   But when the anonymous online study called “Marriage in the 21st Century” showed up in my inbox, I had no idea how profoundly it would change my life. It wasn’t long before I was assigned both a pseudonym (Wife 22) and a caseworker (Researcher 101).   And, just like that, I found myself answering questions.   7. Sometimes I tell him he’s snoring when he’s not snoring so he’ll sleep in the guest room and I can have the bed all to myself. 61. Chet Baker on the tape player. He was cutting peppers for the salad. I looked at those hands and thought, I am going to have this man’s children. 67. To not want what you don’t have. What you can’t have. What you shouldn’t have. 32. That if we weren’t careful, it was possible to forget one another.   Before the study, my life was an endless blur of school lunches and doctor’s appointments, family dinners, budgets, and trying to discern the fastest-moving line at the grocery store. I was Alice Buckle: spouse of William and mother to Zoe and Peter, drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions.   But these days, I’m also Wife 22. And somehow, my anonymous correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn. Soon, I’ll have to make a decision—one that will affect my family, my marriage, my whole life. But at the moment, I’m too busy answering questions.   As it turns out, confession can be a very powerful aphrodisiac.

Me, Myself and Why?


MaryJanice Davidson - 2010
    . . and oh, yeah, love.Sweet and innocent with a twist of girl-next-door, Cadence Jones is not your typical girl and certainly not your typical FBI agent. Just ask her sisters, Shiro and Adrienne. (Wait. . . best if you don’t ask Adrienne anything.) But it’s her special “talent” which makes Cadence so valuable to the FBI and it never comes in more handy than when she and her partner, George, get tagged to bring down the Threefer Killer. A serial killer who inexplicably likes to kill in threes, leave behind inexplicable newspaper clippings, and not one shred of decent forensic evidence, soon starts leaving messages that seem to be just for Cadence and her sisters. Could it be that this killer knows all about Cadence’s special “talent”?In the meantime, love blooms in the most unexpected place when Cadence meets her best friend’s gorgeous brother who is in town visiting—and she discovers that he knows her secret too! When attraction burns hot between them, her best friend isn’t thrilled with the romantic development and this time Cadence just might agree! Suddenly Cadence finds her unbalanced life turned even more upside down as she tries to date a baker who wants to get in her heart and in her bed, dodge a pesky psychiatrist, keep a leash on her sociopath partner, while trying to catch a serial killer who’s now fixated on her. Some days it’s not even worth getting up in the morning.

The Girlfriend Curse


Valerie Frankel - 2005
    Even worse than being the eternal bridesmaid, she's the last girlfriend, the one who awakens in a guy theknowledge of what he's always wanted in a relationship ... and it's never with Peg. Obviously, a major lifestyle change is seriously called for, which is why the distraught interior landscape designer says good-bye to Manhattan and late-night lattes with pal Nina, and hello to a farmhouse on ten acres in tiny, backwater Manshire, Vermont, hoping to meet the ultimate, all-organic country man (without too much facial hair) to keep her warm in those frosty New England winters.Instead, Peg finds herself at Inward Bound -- a proactive adult-education retreat for the hapless and hopelessly lovelorn -- to try to lift her dreaded "girlfriend curse." A steamy (and expressly forbidden) dalliance with gorgeous woman-eater Ray probably isn't going to help cure her. But some romantic insight could arise from her attraction to Linus, Inward Bound's sexy, scruffy, smart and still-single founder. Perhaps there is a secret to be unearthed in the crunchy Green Mountains, one that will magically transform Peg Silver from the Perpetual Also Ran to the Big Winner in love.

The Last Letter from Your Lover


Jojo Moyes - 2008
    When Jennifer Stirling wakes up in the hospital, she can remember nothing-not the tragic car accident that put her there, not her husband, not even who she is. She feels like a stranger in her own life until she stumbles upon an impassioned letter, signed simply "B", asking her to leave her husband. Years later, in 2003, a journalist named Ellie discovers the same enigmatic letter in a forgotten file in her newspaper's archives. She becomes obsessed by the story and hopeful that it can resurrect her faltering career. Perhaps if these lovers had a happy ending she will find one to her own complicated love life, too. Ellie's search will rewrite history and help her see the truth about her own modern romance. A spellbinding, intoxicating love story with a knockout ending, The Last Letter from Your Lover will appeal to the readers who have made One Day and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society bestsellers.

The Apology Project


Jeanette Escudero - 2021
    She’s been fired for not compromising her principles in a high-profile case and then punching her partner in the nose for the misogynistic comment he made in retort (not her finest moment). Leaving a career that gave her purpose, Amelia can only ask, What next?Let it be better than her epic failure of a fortieth birthday party: an open bar full of no-shows except for John Ellis, a total stranger and the new associate at her ex-firm. As it turns out, though, he’s very good company—and a wake-up call. With the help of John and a lot of champagne, Amelia considers the people she’s wronged, from old besties to former boyfriends to coworkers. Amelia resolves to make amends—to those who really deserve it.One apology at a time, Amelia’s looking at the choices she’s made in the past, the new ones she’s making with John, and those she’s making for herself. What next? Maybe a second chance she never expected.

The Way Life Should Be


Christina Baker Kline - 2007
    She is single in New York City, stuck in a job she doesn’t want and a life that seems to have, somehow, just happened.  She inherited a flair for Italian cooking from her grandmother, but she never seems to have the time for it—these days, her oven holds only sweaters. Tacked to her office bulletin board is a photo from a magazine of a tidy cottage on the coast of Maine—a charming reminder of a life that could be hers, if she could only muster the courage to go after it.On a hope and a chance, Angela decides to pack it all up and move to Maine, finding the nudge she needs in the dating profile of a handsome sailor who loves dogs and Italian food.  But her new home isn’t quite matching up with the fantasy. Far from everything familiar, Angela begins to rebuild her life from the ground up. Working at a local coffeehouse, she begins to discover the pleasures and secrets of her new small-town community and, in the process, realizes there’s really no such thing as the way life should be.

A Hundred Pieces of Me


Lucy Dillon - 2014
    But the belongings she's treasured for so long just don't seem to fit who she is now.So Gina makes a resolution. She'll keep just a hundred special items - the rest can go.But that means coming to terms with her past and learning to embrace the future, whatever it might bring . . .

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.

Bobbie Faye's Very (very, very, very) Bad Day


Toni McGee Causey - 2007
    Instead, she discovers that her trailer’s flooded, her no-good brother’s been kidnapped, and the criminals are demanding her mom’s tiara as ransom.Soon Bobbie Faye is committing (unintentional) bank robbery and (fully intentional) car jacking to retrieve her family heirloom. The one bright spot comes in the hard-muscled, impossibly sexy form of Trevor, the guy whose truck she just took hostage. Luckily, Bobbie Faye knows how to outsmart angry bears, drive a speedboat, and handle a gun. As for handling Trevor? No gun-shyness there. Now, if only that pesky state police detective, who also happens to be a pissed-off ex-boyfriend, would stay out of her way . . .

Here I Go Again


Jen Lancaster - 2013
    Back then, she was worshipped...beloved...feared. Present day, not so much. She's been pink-slipped from her high-paying job, dumped by her husband, and kicked out of her condo. Now, at thirty-seven, she's struggling to start a business out of her parents' garage and sleeping under the hair-band posters in her old bedroom.Lissy finally realizes karma is the only bitch bigger than she was. Her present is miserable because of her past. But it's not like she can go back in time and change who she was...or can she?

The Same Sweet Girls


Cassandra King - 2005
    None of the Same Sweet Girls are really girls anymore, and none of them have actually ever been that sweet. But this spirited group of Southern women, who have been holding biannual reunions ever since they were together in college, are nothing short of compelling. There's Julia Stovall, the First Lady of Alabama, who, despite her public veneer, is a down-to-earth gal who only wants to know who her husband is sneaking out with late at night. There's Lanier Sanders, whose husband won custody of their children after he found out about her fling with a colleague. Then there's Astor Deveaux, a former Broadway showgirl who simply can't keep her flirtations in check. And Corinne Cooper, whose incredible story comes to light as the novel unfolds.