Paris for One and Other Stories


Jojo Moyes - 2016
    She's never even been on a romantic weekend away--to anywhere--before. Traveling abroad isn't really her thing. But when Nell's boyfriend fails to show up for their mini-vacation, she has the opportunity to prove everyone--including herself--wrong. Alone in Paris, Nell finds a version of herself she never knew existed: independent and intrepid. Could this turn out to be the most adventurous weekend of her life? Funny, charming, and irresistible, Paris for One is quintessential Jojo Moyes--as are the other stories that round out the collection.

Snobs


Julian Fellowes - 2004
    While visiting his parents' stately home as a paying guest, Edith meets Charles, Earl Broughton, and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, who runs the family estates in East Sussex and Norfolk. To the gossip columns he is one of the most eligible young aristocrats around.When he proposes. Edith accepts. But is she really in love with Charles? Or with his title, his position, and all that goes with it?One inescapable part of life at Broughton Hall is Charles's mother, the shrewd Lady Uckfield, known to her friends as "Googie" and described by the narrator---an actor who moves comfortably among the upper classes while chronicling their foibles---"as the most socially expert individual I have ever known at all well. She combined a watchmaker's eye for detail with a madam's knowledge of the world." Lady Uckfield is convinced that Edith is more interested in becoming a countess than in being a good wife to her son. And when a television company, complete with a gorgeous leading man, descends on Broughton Hall to film a period drama, "Googie's" worst fears seem fully justified.

The Next Big Thing


Johanna Edwards - 2005
    Then she'd finally be able to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Nick, the British hunk she met online, who still thinks she's a size four. She'd finally be confident and graceful and thin-and there's that big cash prize, too, to pay for all those slinky new clothes she'd need. She'd finally have the perfect life.

Riders


Jilly Cooper - 1985
    Having filched each other's horses, and fought and fornicated their way around the capitals of Europe, the feud between the two men finally erupts with devastating consequences during the Los Angeles Olympics.

The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes


Ruth Hogan - 2018
    Once a spirited, independent woman with a rebellious streak, her life has been forever changed by a tragic event twelve years ago. Unable to let go of her grief, she finds solace in the silent company of the souls of her local Victorian cemetery and at the town's lido, where she seeks refuge underwater - safe from the noise and the pain. But a chance encounter with two extraordinary women - the fabulous and wise Kitty Muriel, a convent girl-turned-magician's wife-turned-seventy-something-roller-disco-fanatic, and the mysterious Sally Red Shoes, a bag lady with a prodigious voice - opens up a new world of possibilities, and the chance to start living again.Until the fateful day when the past comes roaring back...

Fat Chance


Nick Spalding - 2014
    Greg's rugby-playing days are well and truly behind him, thanks to countless pints of beer and chicken curry.When Elise, a radio DJ and Zoe's best friend, tells them about a new competition, it seems like the perfect opportunity to turn their lives around. Fat Chance will pit six hefty couples against one another to see who can collectively lose the most weight and walk away with a £50,000 prize.So begins six months of abject misery, tears, and frustration--that just might turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to them--in another laugh-out-loud look at the way we live now from bestselling author Nick Spalding.

Tales From The Crib


Jennifer Coburn - 2006
    She and her husband Jack have been trying to get pregnant for years throughout their rocky marriage. But before she can tell him the big news, Jack has something he needs to announce – he wants a divorce!Rather than split up, Lucy and Jack decide to live together as friends. This way, they can share expenses and parenting responsibilities. Co-parenting is a fine deal for Jack who is back in the dating scene by Lucy’s third trimester of pregnancy, but is a frustrating one for Lucy who has unfulfilled sexual fantasies about every man from restaurant delivery boys to puppeteers. Meanwhile, Lucy’s mother is taking over her life. The grand dame of Planet Earth, Anjoli frequently visits her daughter to share her own brand of maternal wisdom. As Anjoli leaves her Drama Queen bookstore to “help” Lucy with baby Adam, the new grandmother has an affair with baby’s pediatrician, hosts two weddings (including cousin Kimmy’s wedding to herself), and constantly frets about which kind of pie to serve guests. With a cast of family and friends from Lucy’s Jewish aunts to Junior League neighbor, Candace, Tales From the Crib is the story of how one baby can bring people together – so they can drive each other nuts!

Written in Dead Wax


Andrew Cartmel - 2016
    His business card describes him as the “Vinyl Detective” and some people take this more literally than others. Like the beautiful, mysterious woman who wants to pay him a large sum of money to find a priceless lost recording — on behalf of an extremely wealthy (and rather sinister) shadowy client.  Given that he’s just about to run out of cat biscuits, this gets our hero’s full attention. So begins a painful and dangerous odyssey in search of the rarest jazz record of them all…

All That She Can See


Carrie Hope Fletcher - 2017
    If you take away what people feel, you take away anything meaningful. Wanting to diminish the evil in this world is a good cause, one I have fought for the majority of my life, but not like this . . . Cherry has a hidden talent. She can see things other people can't and she decided a long time ago to use this skill to help others. As far as the rest of the town is concerned she's simply the kind-hearted young woman who runs the local bakery, but in private she uses her gift to add something special to her cakes so that after just one mouthful the townspeople start to feel better about their lives. They don't know why they're drawn to Cherry's bakery - they just know that they're safe there and that's how Cherry likes it. She can help them in secret and no one will ever need to know the truth behind her gift.And then Chase arrives in town and threatens to undo all the good Cherry has done. Because it turns out she's not the only one who can see what she sees . . . A story of love, food and a little bit of magic, All That She Can See is an enchanting and beautiful novel that's guaranteed to be the most magical story you'll read all year.

The Bookshop on the Corner


Jenny Colgan - 2016
    Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling. From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.

Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman


Elizabeth Buchan - 2002
    After twenty-five years spent juggling husband, career, and kids with admirable success, Rose suddenly finds both her marriage and her career in unexpected ruin. Forced to begin a new life, she is at first terrified, then energized, by her newfound freedom — it’s amazing what prolonged reflection, a little weight loss, a new slant on independence, and some Parisian lingerie will do for the psyche! Witty, insightful, and emotionally resonant, Buchan’s novel will strike a chord with anyone who has ever wondered what Middle Age would look like from the other side of the looking glass (answer: much better than you could ever expect).

Just Like You


Nick Hornby - 2020
    She met a guy just like herself: same age, same background, same hopes and dreams; they got married and started a family. Too bad he made her miserable. Now, two decades later, she's a nearly-divorced, forty-one-year-old schoolteacher with two school-aged sons, and there is no script anymore. So when she meets Joseph, she isn't exactly looking for love--she's more in the market for a babysitter. Joseph is twenty-two, living at home with his mother, and working several jobs, including the butcher counter where he and Lucy meet. It's not a match anyone one could have predicted. He's of a different class, a different culture, and a different generation. But sometimes it turns out that the person who can make you happiest is the one you least expect, though it can take some maneuvering to see it through. Just Like You is a brilliantly observed, tender, but also brutally funny new novel that gets to the heart of what it means to fall surprisingly and headlong in love with the best possible person--someone you didn't see coming.

Finding Fraser


K.C. Dyer - 2015
    He was tall, red-headed, and at our first meeting at least, a virgin. He was, in fact, the perfect man.     That he was fictional hardly entered into it...   On the cusp of thirty, Emma Sheridan is desperately in need of a change. After a string of failed relationships, she can admit that no man has ever lived up to her idea of perfection: the Scottish fictional star of romantic fantasies the world over—James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.   Her ideal man might be ripped from the pages of a book, but Emma hopes that by making one life-altering decision she might be able to turn fiction into fact. After selling all her worldly possessions, Emma takes off for Scotland with nothing but her burgeoning travel blog to confide in.   But as she scours the country’s rolling green hills and crumbling castles, Emma discovers that in searching for her own Jamie Fraser, she just might find herself.

The Time of My Life


Cecelia Ahern - 2011
    Inside is an invitation – to a meeting with Life. Her life. It turns out she's been ignoring it and it needs to meet with her face to face.It sounds peculiar, but Lucy’s read about this in a magazine. Anyway, she can’t make the date: she’s much too busy despising her job, skipping out on her friends and avoiding her family.But Lucy’s life isn’t what it seems. Some of the choices she’s made – and stories she’s told – aren’t what they seem either. From the moment she meets the man who introduces himself as her life, her stubborn half-truths are going to be revealed in all their glory – unless Lucy learns to tell the truth about what really matters to her.

The Ivy Chronicles


Karen Quinn - 2005
    So she dreams up a new business--helping upscale New Yorkers get their little darlings into the most exclusive kindergartens in the city. What begins as one woman's bid to earn a living becomes an everywoman's tale of midlife reinvention and unexpected romance, set in a looking-glass world where even tots have résumés.