Otis Lee Crenshaw: I Blame Society


Rich Hall - 2005
    A man not above faking his own death to sell more records, this is his not quite true story of romance, recidivism, country music, and an unshakeable belief in Marriage at First Sight.

What in God's Name


Simon Rich - 2012
    For as long as anyone can remember, the founder and CEO (known in some circles as "God") has been phoning it in. Lately, he's been spending most of his time on the golf course. And when he does show up at work, it's not to resolve wars or end famines, but to Google himself and read what humans have been blogging about him. When God decides to retire (to pursue his lifelong dream of opening an Asian Fusion restaurant), he also decides to destroy Earth. His employees take the news in stride, except for Craig and Eliza, two underpaid angels in the lowly Department of Miracles. Unlike their boss, Craig and Eliza love their jobs -- uncapping city fire hydrants on hot days, revealing lost keys in snow banks -- and they refuse to accept that earth is going under. The angels manage to strike a deal with their boss. He'll call off his Armageddon, if they can solve their toughest miracle yet: getting the two most socially awkward humans on the planet to fall in love. With doomsday fast approaching, and the humans ignoring every chance for happiness thrown their way, Craig and Eliza must move heaven and earth to rescue them -- and the rest of us, too.

Class Mom


Laurie Gelman - 2017
    Jen already has two college-age daughters by two different (probably) musicians, and it's her second time around the class mom block with five-year-old Max--this time with a husband and father by her side. Though her best friend and PTA President sees her as the-wisest-candidate for the job (or oldest), not all of the other parents agree.From recording parents' response times to her emails about helping in the classroom, to requesting contributions of-special-brownies for curriculum night, not all of Jen's methods win approval from the other moms. Throw in an old flame from Jen's past, a hyper-sensitive -allergy mom,-a surprisingly sexy kindergarten teacher, and an impossible-to-please Real Housewife-wannabe, causing problems at every turn, and the job really becomes much more than she signed up for.

A Price For Everything


Mary Sheepshanks - 1995
    I read the book at a single sitting and felt bereft when I finally closed the cover onto the last page.""The house itself seemed to possess her. It was a love affair, and like many love affairs, it was inconvenient." Nestled cozily in the English countryside stands a house called Duntan-grand, proud, beautiful to look at, yet slowly falling apart and riddled with problems. How can Sonia, Lady Duntan so fiercely love such a monster of a house, almost as much as she loves her four children, perhaps more than she loves her husband, whose family has lived at Duntan for over 200 years?For Sonia, restoring Duntan to its former glory has become synonymous with repairing her own sense of self, and refurbishing the house means working closely with Simon Hadleigh, the charming director of the Heritage at Risk Association. But as her marriage seems to be crumbling faster than the house itself; her children growing up quickly; her painting career taking off and Simon awakening in her a long, dormant passion, Sonia realizes that everything has its price...

The Runaway Princess


Hester Browne - 2012
    Amy soon discovers that dating an heir to a throne has many charms—intimate dinners, glittering galas, and a dazzling new wardrobe with tiaras to match. But there are also drawbacks: imagine the anxiety of meeting your boyfriend’s parents multiplied by “riding in a private jet,” “staying in a castle,” and “discussing the line of succession over lunch.” Not to mention the sudden press interest in your very un-royal family. Amy would do anything for Leo, but is finding her Prince Charming worth the price of losing herself?

The Royal We


Heather Cocks - 2015
    I guess it depends on what I do next."American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister, Lacey, has always been the romantic who fantasized about glamour and royalty, fame and fortune. Yet it's Bex who seeks adventure at Oxford and finds herself living down the hall from Prince Nicholas, Great Britain's future king. And when Bex can't resist falling for Nick, the person behind the prince, it propels her into a world she did not expect to inhabit, under a spotlight she is not prepared to face.Dating Nick immerses Bex in ritzy society, dazzling ski trips, and dinners at Kensington Palace with him and his charming, troublesome brother, Freddie. But the relationship also comes with unimaginable baggage: hysterical tabloids, Nick's sparkling and far more suitable ex-girlfriends, and a royal family whose private life is much thornier and more tragic than anyone on the outside knows. The pressures are almost too much to bear, as Bex struggles to reconcile the man she loves with the monarch he's fated to become.Which is how she gets into trouble.Now, on the eve of the wedding of the century, Bex is faced with whether everything she's sacrificed for love-her career, her home, her family, maybe even herself-will have been for nothing.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day


Winifred Watson - 1938
    When her employment agency sends her to the wrong address, her life takes an unexpected turn. The alluring nightclub singer, Delysia LaFosse, becomes her new employer, and Miss Pettigrew encounters a kind of glamour that she had only met before at the movies. Over the course of a single day, both women are changed forever.

A Billion Jokes: Volume 1


Peter Serafinowicz - 2012
    Peter Serafinowicz's Questions and Answers is a showcase for the razor wit and joyful nonsense of one of Britain's cleverest comedians, firing back genuinely funny instant replies to a stream of questions from the general public. This book collects together several hundred jokes from Peter's store of one-liners in a stylish, faux-Victorian, gifty hardback, just in time for Christmas. 'Peter Serafinowicz is hilarious' David Walliams' 'It's funny, but Peter Serafinowicz is the kind of funny person that funny people find funny' Simon Pegg 'Peter Serafinowicz is one of the funniest women in the world' Derren Brown

Uneasy Money


P.G. Wodehouse - 1916
    His beautiful fiancée, Claire Fenwick, will not marry him unless he makes more money. Bill decides to move to America in hopes of striking it rich. Just before he sails, Bill is unexpectedly bequeathed a million pounds by an American he once helped at golf; the millionaire left his niece and nephew only twenty pounds, which makes him uneasy. He endeavors to approach them and see if he can fix up something, like giving them half the inheritance. He discovers that it can be difficult to give money away.

Last Couple Standing


Matthew Norman - 2020
    They got married around the same time, had kids around the same time, and now, fifteen years later, they’ve started getting divorced around the same time, too. With three of the Core Four unions crumbling to dust around them, Jessica and Mitch Butler take a long, hard look at their own marriage. Can it be saved? Or is divorce, like some fortysomething zombie virus, simply inescapable?To maximize their chance at immunity, Jessica and Mitch try something radical. Their friends’ divorces mostly had to do with sex—having it, not having it, wanting to have it with other people—so they decide to relax a few things. Terms are discussed, conditions are made, and together the Butlers embark on the great experiment of taking their otherwise happy, functional marriage and breaking some very serious rules.Jessica and Mitch are convinced they’ve hit upon the next evolution of marriage. But as lines are crossed and hot bartenders pursued, they each start to wonder if they’ve made a huge mistake. What follows is sexy, fun, painful, messy, and completely surprising to them both. Because sometimes doing something bad is the only way to get to the heart of what’s really good.

The Hot Flash Club


Nancy Thayer - 2003
    This wise, wonderful, and delightfully witty New York Times bestseller is a coming of age novel about four intrepid women who discover themselves as they were truly meant to be: passionate, alive, and ready to face the best years of their lives.

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding


Julia Strachey - 1932
    This short novel about a wedding was written in 1932 by a niece of Lytton Strachey and first published by The Hogarth Press.

Size 12 Is Not Fat


Meg Cabot - 2005
    That was before she left the pop-idol life behind after she gained a dress size or two — and lost a boyfriend, a recording contract, and her life savings (when Mom took the money and ran off to Argentina). Now that the glamour and glory days of endless mall appearances are in the past, Heather's perfectly happy with her new size 12 shape (the average for the American woman!) and her new job as an assistant dorm director at one of New York's top colleges. That is, until the dead body of a female student from Heather's residence hall is discovered at the bottom of an elevator shaft.The cops and the college president are ready to chalk the death off as an accident, the result of reckless youthful mischief. But Heather knows teenage girls . . . and girls do not elevator surf. Yet no one wants to listen — not the police, her colleagues, or the P.I. who owns the brownstone where she lives — even when more students start turning up dead in equally ordinary and subtly sinister ways. So Heather makes the decision to take on yet another new career: as spunky girl detective! But her new job comes with few benefits, no cheering crowds, and lots of liabilities, some of them potentially fatal. And nothing ticks off a killer more than a portly ex-pop star who's sticking her nose where it doesn't belong . . .

The Loved One


Evelyn Waugh - 1948
    Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday. There, Dennis enters the fragile and bizarre world of Aimée, the naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr Joyboy, the master of the embalmer's art...A dark and savage satire on the Anglo-American cultural divide, The Loved One depicts a world where love, reputation, and death cost a very great deal.This is an alternate cover edition: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3....

Watermelon


Marian Keyes - 1995
    Then, on the day she gives birth to their first baby, James informs her that he's leaving her. Claire is left with a newborn daughter, a broken heart, and a postpartum body that she can hardly bear to look at.She decides to go home to Dublin. And there, sheltered by the love of a quirky family, she gets better. So much so, in fact, that when James slithers back into her life, he's in for a bit of a surprise.