But, here, three women are about to discover that friends are the only accessories they will need. Working mum Alison is devoted to her daughter, but since juggling motherhood with a career has left her with a permanent headache, a larger family is the only thing Not on her to-do list...Trophy wife Katherine seems rich, glamorous and care-free. In fact, her husband only ever touches her as he guides her into social functions, and her kids barely know she exists either. Stay-at-home mum Gwen has three lovely kids and a blissful marriage to Rob. It seems like she has it all - until two bombshells cause her perfect world to crumble. A deliciously warm, funny and moving take on being a mum, making new friends and dealing with the posturing and politics of the playground - something we never really leave behind...

    And so is her kitchen.Divorced, heartbroken and living in a lonely New York apartment with a tiny kitchen, Rachel Goldman realizes she doesn't even know how to cook the simplest meal for herself. Can learning to fry an egg help her understand where her life went wrong? She dives into the culinary basics. Then she launches a blog to vent her misery about life, love and her goal of an unburnt casserole. To her amazement, the blog's a hit. She becomes a minor celebrity. Next, a sexy Spaniard enters her life. Will her souffles stop falling? Will she finally forget about the husband she still loves? And how can she explain to her readers that she still hasn't learned how to cook up a happy life from scratch?

    The act severs Lawrence from himself. Like the stammer Lawrence develops, where words collide and are blocked, so is he. When Lawrence reaches early adulthood, he starts a friendship with the son of one of his workmates. He connects with the boy he once was, damaged beyond repair. At the heart of Lawrence's desires is the longing to be made whole. But after he is savagely beaten by the boy's father and his workmates, Lawrence decides to retreat from the world. He stays on in his mother's country home, and lives as a hermit for the next thirty years. When a single mother moves into the abandoned farm next door to Lawrence with her teenage daughter and ten-year-old son, his isolation is shattered and he withdraws completely. But the mother asks him to get back to work on the vegetable garden he'd been tending on their land before their arrival. Her boy David is left alone at home a lot, and he and Lawrence begin a friendship. The sense of tension and foreboding is almost unbearable as we witness the boy's growing interest in Lawrence and the older man's blossoming at the chance of the tenderness he has been denied his whole life. In the end, an act of breathtaking courage and sacrifice will save both Lawrence and the boy, but by then your heart will have shattered into a million pieces. Miles Franklin-award winner Sofie Laguna's new novel is both dark and confronting, but transformative through the light, redemption and joy the author so masterfully conjures in its pages. You finish the book with a sense of wonder and exhilaration for what she has achieved and what the book has given you as a reader.

    She retreats to her room to read and play the pianoforte and, when obliged to mix in society, finds it safer to quote platitudes from books rather than express her real opinions. She also finds it safer to befriend those who are socially “beneath” her. When wealthy Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley glide into her sisters’ lives, Mary becomes infatuated with an impoverished young musician, the son of her old wet-nurse, who plays the fiddle at the Meryton assemblies.It is only after her sisters tease her about her “beau with the bow” that Mary is forced to examine her real feelings and confront her own brand of pride and prejudice.An elegant accompaniment to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, The Forgotten Sister plucks the neglected Mary from obscurity and beautifully reveals her hopes and dreams.

    Qais Ahmed is everything she never wants to be: narcissistic, manipulative and arrogant.However, despite her relentless efforts, she is unable to resist his charm and wit and is drawn to him once she gets to know the real him.She soon discovers that he isn't just a part of her professional life but has a deep connection to a past she is trying to forget.Will this disturbing secret tear them apart or bind them together forever?

    Years after coming to New York to try to build a life, she has found herself with two kids, a husband, two jobs, a PhD―and now they’re filing for bankruptcy. As she tries to balance her dream and the impossibility of striving toward it while her work and home lives feel poised to fall apart, she wakes at ungodly hours to run miles by the icy river, struggling to quiet her thoughts.When she reaches out to Sasha, her long-lost childhood friend, it feels almost harmless―one of those innocuous ruptures that exist online, in texts. But her timing is uncanny. Sasha is facing a crisis, too, and perhaps after years apart, their shared moments of crux can bring them back into each other’s lives.In Want, Lynn Steger Strong explores the subtle violences enacted on a certain type of woman when she dares to want things―and all the various violences in which she implicates herself as she tries to survive.

    A twenty-three year old with model girl looks and a book deal with a major publisher, she's outselling the established names in her field and is fast becoming the darling of the media.Becky Hunter has money problems. Can she earn enough from her light-hearted romance novels to counteract boyfriend Alex's extravagant spending habits, before their rocky world collapses?Hard up factory worker Jan Chilver sees writing as an escape from her troubled, lonely life. She is offered a lifeline—but fails to read the small print...In the competitive world of publishing, success can be merely a matter of who you know—and how ruthless you are prepared to be to get to the top.BEST SELLER is a novella of 40k words (roughly half as long as an average length novel), a slightly dark, slightly edgy drama with a twist or three in the tale.

    But coming home to the country stirs shameful memories of the past, including the tragic end-of-school muck up day accident twenty years earlier.Sara, a breast cancer survivor afraid to fall in love; Poppy, a tough, ambitious journo still craving her father’s approval; Amber, a spoilt socialite addicted to painkillers and cosmetic procedures; and Caitlin, a doctor frustrated by her controlling family.At The Dandelion House, the women will discover something about themselves and a secret that ties all four to each other and to the house – forever.Get it as an ebook now https://books2read.com/ap/RWKlqv/Jenn... Also avail in print at https://www.jennjmcleod.com

       Tina Fontana is the hapless but brazen thirty-year-old executive assistant to Robert Barlow, the all-powerful and commanding CEO of Titan Corp., a multinational media conglomerate. She’s excellent at her job and beloved by her famous boss—but after six years of making his reservations for restaurants she’d never get into on her own and pouring his drinks from bottles that cost more than her rent, she’s bored, broke, and just a bit over it all.   When a technical error with Robert’s travel-and-expenses report presents Tina with the opportunity to pay off the entire balance of her student loan debt with what would essentially be pocket change for her boss, she struggles with the decision: She’s always played by the rules. But it’s such a relatively small amount of money for the Titan Corporation—and for her it would be a life-changer . . .  The Assistants speaks directly to a new generation of women who feel stuck and unable to get ahead playing by the rules. It will appeal to all of those who have ever asked themselves, “How is it that after all these years, we are still assistants?”

    Try something new. Buy a pair of heels. Get a promotion. Fall in love. Seems simple, especially when Christine meets Patrick, the man who could be Mr. Right. He's got the right credentials: a job, a sense of humor, a love of all things Indiana Jones, and best of all, he's actually taller than Christine. But busy schedules take over and gets in the way of Patrick and Christine's budding romance. Life interferes, as it has a way of doing, and Christine wants to throw in the towel. Is the magic of the Christmas season enough to renew Christine's faith in love?

    But it’s what she leaves unsaid—she’s alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her flesh—that feels the most true. Everyone around her seems to have an entirely different idea of what it means to be an adult: her best friend, Indigo, is getting married; her brother—who miraculously seems unscathed by their shared tumultuous childhood—and sister-in-law are having a hoped-for baby; and her friend Matthew continues to wholly devote himself to making dark paintings at the cost of being flat broke. But when Andrea’s niece finally arrives, born with a heartbreaking ailment, the Bern family is forced to reexamine what really matters. Will this drive them together or tear them apart? Told in gut-wrenchingly honest, mordantly comic vignettes, All Grown Up is a breathtaking display of Jami Attenberg’s power as a storyteller, a whip-smart examination of one woman’s life, lived entirely on her own terms.

    Perfect for readers who love The Missing Pieces of Us by Fleur McDonald and Josephine Moon. With her dreams of dominating Melbourne's fashion scene in tatters, Nella Martini has returned to the last place she wants to be – Torrente Blu, the market garden inherited from her late nonna. She just needs to clean up the property, sell it quickly, and avoid run-ins with her neighbour: surly Adrian Tomaso. But when Nella comes across her nonna's cookbook things start to change. The place, with its endless tomato plants and gallons of olive oil in storage, gets under her skin, as does Adrian with his passion for this life. But her dreams have always meant being anywhere but here – haven't they? Or has the right place been here all this time? For Esta Feliciano in the 1950s, the right place was her Italian village. But in search of a better life than war-torn Italy has to offer, her husband has moved Esta and their daughter to this alien country, settling on a small, flat piece of land that he calls Torrente Blu. Can Esta come to grips with the harsh Australian sun and strange culture? Woven with traditional Italian recipes, The Right Place is the heartfelt story of two women's journeys, as they discover how the right place to call home can be where you make it...

    But, obsessed with order and routine, he’s a prisoner to perfection. Disengaged from the emotional life of his North Carolina family, Felix has let his wife, Ella, deal with their special-needs son by herself.A talented jewelry designer turned full-time mother, Ella is the family rock…until her heart attack shatters their carefully structured existence. Now Harry, a gifted teen grappling with the chaos of Tourette’s, confronts a world outside his parents’ control, one that tests his desire for independence.As Harry searches for his future, and Ella adapts to the limits of her failing health, Felix struggles with his past and present roles. To prevent the family from being ripped apart, they must each bend with the inevitability of change and reinforce the ties that bind.

    But, in the wake of tragedy and betrayal during their teenage years, everything changed. Val went on to fame and fortune. Addie stayed behind in their small Midwestern town. Destiny, however, had more in store for these two. And when, twenty-five years later, Val shows up at Addie’s front door with blood on her coat and terror on her face, it is the beginning of a wild adventure for two women joined by love and history who find strength together that they could not find alone.

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