But her autistic twenty-year-old son Merlin is desperate to lose his virginity, and a prostitute seems like the only option . . . only Lucy picks up an undercover policewoman instead.Let off with a suspended sentence, Lucy resigns herself to the fact that her son will never have sex, let alone find love… until the morning she miraculously discovers Merlin in bed with a girl.But is tough, tattooed Kayleigh just taking Merlin for a ride? If so, why? And what has brought Lucy’s snake of an ex-husband wriggling back into their lives?As all her best laid plans for Merlin’s happiness chaotically unravel, will Lucy ever be able to cut her son’s psychological umbilical cord and start to live her own life? And will the funny, quirky and marvellously magical Merlin ever find real love?With plenty of comic twists and emotional turns, Kathy Lette’s riotous yet heartrending novel tackles the taboo subject of sex for the ‘differently abled’ – and shows us that when it comes to sex, we all have special needs …

    She’s found that meeting women is difficult – kind of daunting, actually. She feels like she’s been run through the mill, and she doesn’t want to go through it again. But when her best pal and business partner Mitchell signs her up at the GirlsGaylore.com dating website and characterizes her as a happy-go-lucky, amorous, risk-taking single, all hell breaks loose. Suddenly women are coming out of the woodwork and Sky hardly knows what to make of it. EIGHT DATES is a comical story of a woman’s search for Ms. Right—and how she finds quite a few Ms. Wrongs along the way.

    Thirty years later, she’s a one-book wonder, a fifty-something college professor with the dubious distinction of being an expert on Jane Austen, hidden in the shadow of her famous husband and his Civil War novels. “Too young to retire, and too old to start over,” Margaret feels as dried up and dead as the neglected gardens her husband took such pride in before he became ill. Wyck Fitzsimmons is the Asheville landscape architect Gavin Braithwaite hires to restore his precious gardens to their former glory. She learned a long time ago that plants and trees are safer and more reliable companions than other people. Under Wyck’s care, the gardens begin to come back to life, but the flowers aren’t the only thing blossoming. For the first time in decades, Margaret feels the stirrings of love, but those long-buried feelings frighten her more than the prospect of withering away alone in her ivory tower of academia. Gavin, more observant than most people give him credit for, sees the attraction developing between his wife and his gardener. Using every means at his disposal, he arranges things so that Margaret has no choice but to remain faithful to him, even after death. Margaret, confused and faced with losing everything that offers her any kind of security, flees to England – to Austen and Wordsworth country – where she tries to forget Wyck and all the feelings she has awakened. Back in North Carolina, Wyck must come to terms with her own past and somehow find a way to forgive before it’s too late to make amends. Love, it seems, can take root in even the most barren hearts, if only Margaret and Wyck can find the courage to let it grow.

    Discover the irresistible magic of the morning after, or the month after, or even years later. What happens when it’s not just about discovering new love, but letting love settle a little? What are these passionate lovers, fighters, executives, and explorers up to now? These charming, funny, and entertaining short stories can each be read as standalone pieces to whisk you into new and different worlds…or immerse you in universes you already know and love, and can’t wait to revisit. Find out what happens next in this After Happily Ever After anthology, with stories by Jae (Under a Falling Star), Lee Winter (The Brutal Truth), RJ Nolan (L.A. Metro), Lola Keeley (The Music and the Mirror), Chris Zett (Irregular Heartbeat), Cheyenne Blue (Code of Conduct), Roslyn Sinclair (The Lily and the Crown), Alex K. Thorne (Chasing Stars), and G Benson (All the Little Moments).

    She should be thrilled, but somewhere along the line she took a wrong turn and ended up in the dreaded rat race of life. When she meets Jolene, a scuba instructor from Bonaire, curiosity stirs deep within. Suddenly, she begins to crave adventure. By getting out of her comfort zone, Sarah soon begins to realize that life begins to bloom beneath the facade of materialism. Purpose and meaning can’t be found on the surface. It can only be found when she digs deep and uncovers things that make her question what’s most important in life. Does Sarah have the courage to embrace her newfound discoveries, even if that means letting go of what brings her comfort in the process?

    I’d have known,’ she says, her voice little more than a whisper and her eyes searching mine. ‘A mother would know if her child died, wouldn’t she?’The phone call comes in the middle of the night, rousing Danni from her safe, warm bed. The police have found her mother Diana wandering along the main road, miles from her house, confused and lost.Danni races to her mother’s side, but when she arrives, as always, her mother doesn’t seem to care. ‘Go away, Danni,’ she says. ‘I don’t want you.’When she was a child, Danni would lie awake at night wondering what she had done to make her mother so cold. Now she is determined to put the past behind them and make Diana as happy as she can in the time they have left.But as some of Diana’s memories are slipping away, others are forcing their way to the surface. One night Diana breaks down in tears and reveals her heartbreaking secret. Years before Danni was born, there was another baby who never got to see the world. Now there is one last thing Danni can do for her mother. She will find her brother’s resting place, and bring Diana some peace.But good intentions can have unexpected consequences, and soon Danni’s life will be changed forever. Are some secrets best left buried?A completely heartbreaking and compelling story of families, secrets, and the fierce love between mothers and children. Fans of Amanda Prowse, Ali Mercer and Jodi Picoult will smile through their tears.

    

    Sure, 94 Gaylord Street is falling apart, and she has to deal with her uncle Bruce’s eccentric friends thanks to his unusual Will.But that’s okay. She’ll fire up her power tools and turn the dilapidated terrace house into a desirable inner-city pad. Then she’ll sell up and head home to the country.Jorgie hasn’t counted on falling for cute neighbour Marta, who’s found her heart-home among the tight queer-community of Gaylord Street. Between mugs of too-strong tea and Jorgie’s lack of a working shower, the two forge a surprising connection.But what happens when the renovation’s complete? Can Jorgie really just toss aside her tool belt and saunter away?

    So when Amy Donoghue, social media manager extraordinaire steps in to rehabilitate her image, Ali realises she may have to wade once more into the grubby insta-hole. With her ex, Sam, still ignoring her and her mother Mini having a mild grief-induced psychotic break (her scheme for scattering Miles' ashes seems not only bonkers but borderline illegal), Ali's got little else to cling on to but #sponcon and #ootds. Meanwhile Shelly is trying to settle into her new life as a mum-of-two while being held hostage by her mysterious insta-stalker whose sole objective is to keep Shelly on Instagram. But with her fellow Mummy Influencer friends @HolisticHazel immersed in creating WYND festival (her answer to the Goop Summit) and @PollysFewBits being as non-descript as ever, Shelly must get to the bottom of it herself. When Ali starts attending Catfishers Anonymous as a part of Amy's plan for Image Rehab, she discovers some information that may just help Shelly ...

    

    It goes down into the guts of the world. But a child’s love for a parent is different. It goes up. It’s more ethereal. It’s not quite present on the earth.’In present-day Melbourne, a man attempts to piece together the mystery of his father’s apparent suicide, as his young family slowly implodes. At the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, in 1976, a man searching for salvation must confront his capacity for violence and darkness. And in a not-too-distant future, a woman with a life-altering decision to make travels through a climate-ravaged landscape to visit her estranged father.In Moonland is a portrait of three generations, each grappling with their own mortality. Spanning the wild idealism of the 70s through to the fragile hope of the future, it is a novel about the struggle for transcendence and the reverberating effects of family bonds. This long-awaited second outing from Miles Allinson, the multi-award-winning author of Fever of Animals, will affirm his reputation as one of Australia’s most interesting contemporary fiction writers, and urge us to see our own political and environmental reality in a new light.

    Golden hair. Golden skin. Golden movie career.Only one problem: she hates it.She flees to her sister’s seaside town – where she meets the confident & charming Kirsty McBride.Kirsty is everything Saffron wants to be. Perhaps also, everything she wants.But Saffron can’t have it all. So now, she has to decide: does she crave Kirsty enough to blow up her golden life?Best-selling lesbian romance authors Clare Lydon & TB Markinson have written a sizzling lesbian love story about not being afraid and going after what you really want. Read it today!

    Way back, the women went to Catholic school together and collaborated on racy letters to a soldier in Vietnam who thought they were much older than seventh graders—a ruse that typifies later shenanigans, usually brought on by red-headed Colleen, a self-proclaimed “Celtic warrior.”After ditching Colleen’s car to collect the insurance, they drive from one unexpected event to the next in Big Blue, MK’s Buick clunker with a St. Christopher statue glued to the dash. The glow-in-the-dark icon guides them past the farm debris, mine ruins, and fracking waste of the northern brow of Appalachia. Yet their world is not a dystopia. Rather, MK and Colleen show why, amid all the desperation, there is still a community of hope, filled with people looking out for their neighbors and with survivors who offer joy, laughter, and good will.

    But Grant is hiding a dark secret which threatens the outcome: an addiction to prescription pills. As Alison struggles to rebuild her life, Grant's daughter, Sadie, spends more time with a new friend. Frustrated that her parents exclude her from the conversations about her beloved aunt, Sadie makes increasingly risky choices which could endanger not only her, but her entire family.Alison is also harboring her own secret-an extramarital affair with a woman. Her close call with mortality spurs her to take a closer look at her marriage, explore her newfound sexuality and figure out what she wants for her future. How will she rebuild her life and move forward? Can she find a way to repair her broken relationship with her only sister?Secrets swirling around drug use and sexual identity must be dealt with in order for the family to learn to trust each other again.

    Bordering on obsessed and unable to make sense of her solitary life, she heads cross-country without a word, resolved to cultivate a new persona by creating her own kind of amnesia. But as time goes by, she is unable to deny hers truest self. Targeted media.