One follows Joanna Aronson as she cares for her father, Clyde, during his latest struggle with cancer while butting heads with her stepmother, Brenda, a cold woman whom Joanna suspects of neglecting him and even trying to kill him. Interspersed are Joanna’s memories of growing up in suburban Baltimore with her sister and parents in the ’60s, a life that seems idyllic yet seethes with subterranean discontents. Clyde, an English teacher, dominates the family with his charisma but undermines it with his affairs, including a liaison with one of Joanna’s teenage acquaintances. Joanna’s mother, Evie, feels trapped in housewifery and longs for the fulfillment she felt as a Communist Party activist. Joanna, though drawn like Clyde to the life of the mind, feels slighted because of his wish that she had been a boy. A colleague of her father’s seduces her at age 14. Threading through the story is Clyde’s memoir of growing up with his brother, Harry, in New York’s National Hebrew Orphan Home after his father abandoned the family and his mother placed the two boys there in 1924. It’s a Dickensian story of cold, hunger, loneliness, frequent beatings, and sexual abuse, but it’s lit with friendships and intellectual ambitions. Cherubin’s bittersweet tale is an epic and indelible character study of Clyde from frightened cub to kvetching lion in winter, with overtones of King Lear and an occasional queasily incestuous vibe. She writes in evocative prose that mixes astringent reality with glowing reverie. (“I sized up the three agents,” recalls Evie of a visit from the FBI during the Joseph McCarthy era. “Cold, smug, and bored. They could not begin to understand how alive I was during the war, how urgent and meaningful my life was thanks to the CP. How engaged I was with the world… I still miss those days.”) As Joanna grapples with her clan’s vexed legacy, the author shows how both betrayal and forgiveness can propagate across generations.An alternately dark and luminous, wounded and affectionate portrait of a family in crisis.

    She is left to bring up a stepson, Simon, and her own little twins on a very inadequate income. Stretched thin by the grief and new responsibilities of raising a family alone, a trip to a remote home in the Scottish highlands provides immediate solace for Katherine. Colours look brighter, food is tastier, and every day is a new pleasure. Little does she know that further family trouble awaits on the horizon, as well as a new love in the most unexpected of places...

    However, he remains single, childless, and subsists in cramped apartments. She harbors guilt for her supposed failure until she discovers a sketch-book he’d made of his life, which prompts her own journey to live authentically.While this textured story combines serious issues such as alcoholism, death, and family conflict, it’s balanced with wit and humor and is filled with endearing, unforgettable characters. The story spans decades, beginning in 1970 and ending in the present. Readers will be immersed in this tale as it poses an intriguing question: “What pictures will you have of yourself by the end of your life?”“hugely moving, beautifully rendered, and brilliant,” Lidia Yucknavitch

    Marcus wants nothing more than to indulge in drink, drugs and women.But when he meets the plot-holders on the Butterfly Lane allotments--Sophia, a charming, but troubled, woman in the midst of a spiritual crisis; Alex, his fiery, Greek neighbour, who covets both Marcus’s plot and a mysterious book that belonged to his grandfather; and Benjamin, a shadowy recluse--the reason for his inheritance becomes clear.

    “You know I just worked a twelve-hour shift. Gotta get me right before I go to sleep.” He smiled his ugly smile and opened the screen door. “I’ll take you shoppin’ when I wake up; spend a couple bands on you.”He put his key in the lock and turned it… But the door was snatched open before Mone’s hand could even reach the doorknob.Lacresha’s eyes opened wide with fear as she witnessed a tall masked man step from behind the door and raise a gun to Mone’s face.“Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?” The masked man stated coldly.

     *Includes a free extract from Katherine Heiny’s debut novel, Standard Deviation* 'Just as Jane Austen believed that four people cannot comfortably walk abreast, Charlene believes that three people cannot amicably move one person's belongings. At least not when two of the people used to be married to each other, and the marriage resulted in a bitter divorce in order for one of them to marry the third person' When Forrest's ex-wife Barbara calls on him to help her move out of the home they once shared, his second wife Charlie finds herself carrying not only dozens of boxes, but also the weight of their shared past. Barbara and Charlie first met twenty years ago when they volunteered at a suicide crisis hotline, and one night in particular is seared into Charlie's memory…From the author of Standard Deviation comes a wryly tender story of crises and cardboard boxes; of marriage and moving on.

    Usually when I tell people that they laugh and ask me what my real name is. I just look them dead on and repeat, 'Free.' I left my old name behind with my old life; shed both of them like a useless layer of skin. When I stepped free of that world, I took the name Free. It is my real name. I picked it myself. What could be more real than that?"Since leaving home at the age of 18, Free has traveled the country searching for home. Her travels afford a variety of experiences, from following the Grateful Dead to waitressing in Chicago to selling jewelry in New Orleans' French Market, but nothing seems to quell her sense of unrest. All the while her estranged brother Alfie is in her thoughts. Once she finds him, perhaps she'll finally feel at home. But her world is filled with bad choices and unsavory characters, and she finds that freedom sometimes comes at a cost. The reader will feel as if they are traveling right alongside Free in this moving coming-of-age story.

    An Ivy League graduate who grew up on Park Avenue takes his first job at the most sensational tabloid newspaper in New York City - and soon finds himself writing promotional stories about a cash giveaway contest intended to keep the paper alive! Jack Stone is not your everyday reporter, and his real education doesn’t begin in earnest until he hooks up with streetwise photographer Vinnie Corcora to do stories about the contest winners - a cast of characters who bring new meaning to "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” It’s a wild ride that defies expectations and stereotypes, and along the way Jack earns a Ph.D in the human condition - while learning the true meaning of love, loyalty and friendship.

    A few boyfriends and one abortion later she falls in love with Salim, the proud and elegant Pakistani with eyes like treacle. East meets West in a passionate mixed marriage. However, Marianne knows little of the Islamic view of motherhood. When his wife proves unfaithful, Salim reasons that she is morally incapable of bringing up her children and kidnaps them while she is at work...

    Lowri is pregnant, looking forward to a new life with her lover, Simon. But her plans are shattered. She finds herself alone, her face scarred, her future uncertain Her estranged husband, Jack, proposes they “settle” for each other, and raise Lowri’s unborn child on the Isle of Wight, in the idyllic village of Elmstone. Lowri is befriended by Carina, the beautiful Italian woman living in Elmstone Manor, and Heather, the popular local café proprietor. However, she soon discovers that no-one is the person they appear. What dark secrets is Heather hiding from her family and from the village? Why is Carina desperate for Lowri to fail in her new life and prepared to go to increasingly desperate lengths to destroy her? As she confronts her own insecurities, and faces another devastating loss, will Lowri find the courage to be proud of the person she is hiding behind the smile? Will she find true love amid the confusion and intrigue?

    But my Karma won’t let me, I have to compensate for what I’ve done.”Kolkata, 2008 Driven by a crazed love, Dev, our next door shy software engineer commits the biggest mistake of his life. Over 72 marathon hours, he loses his education, career, love, and life by a single act of madnes.Bengaluru 2012 Years later, Dev reaches Bengaluru in search of a better life. Destiny brings him face to face with his first love once again. He chases the same impossible dream only to find himself burning and failing in love. On the verge of losing everything that mattered, Dev fights his sense of practicality and his crazy, but limitless ‘Love’.Let’s find out who wins!Error Code Love takes you on an epic journey through the roads of friendship, jealousy, obsession, mistakes, redemption and love. It raises questions allied to grey areas of teen emotions and lets you find the answers within.

    The walking wounded. These are the stories of ordinary people.

    Afterwards, hisdaughter Eleanor discovers a will, in which he has left his entireestate to a woman she has never heard of before. Hiding it fromher siblings, she sets out to solve this mystery, and to unearth theconfronting truth about her reclusive father’s past.But Henry isn’t the only Hoffman with secrets. In the months thatfollow, his children learn things about each other they could neverpreviously have imagined.The Last Will and Testament of Henry Hoffman is a gripping andmany-layered story of love and loss, conflict and survival. Itexplores subjects that affect us all: guilt and redemption, theinescapability of the past, and how trauma resonates acrossgenerations.

    

    The last thing she expected was to fall in love with a complete stranger at the hen weekend. Which wouldn’t be a problem apart from the teeny tiny fact that she’s already married to somebody else… Is it a case of the Seven-Year-Itch or could it be the real deal? Lucy needs to decide if she is going to leave the security of her stale marriage in order to find out if the grass is indeed greener on the other side, or whether it’s worth having one more go at watering her own garden. Could this party-loving, city girl really leave the country she loves for a farmer from the West of Ireland? Is there such a thing as fate? What about karma? Is John Kelly all that he seems?