Mel and Abi were best friends back in the day, sharing the highs and lows of student life, until Mel’s unplanned pregnancy made her drop out of her studies.Now, seventeen years later, Mel and Abi’s lives couldn’t be more different. Mel is happily married, having raised her son on her own before meeting her husband, Ben. Now they share gorgeous girls and have a chaotic but happy family home, with three children.Abi, meanwhile, followed her lover to LA for a glamorous life of parties, celebrity and indulgence. Everything was perfect, until she discovered her partner had been cheating on her. Seventeen years wasted, and nothing to show for it. So what Abi needs now is a true friend to lean on, to share her grief over a glass of wine, and to have some time to heal. And what better place than Mel’s house, with her lovely kids, and supportive husband…This dark, unsettling tale of the reunion of long-lost friends is thoroughly gripping exploration of wanting what you can’t have, jealousy and revenge from Sunday Times bestseller Adele Parks.

    They share happy lives with their children and their close friends Craig and Jenny. They’re lucky. But beneath the surface, no relationship is simple: can another woman’s husband and another man’s wife ever just be good friends?Little by little, Carly’s question sends her life spiralling out of control, as she begins to doubt everything she thought was true. Who can she trust? The man she has promised to stick by forever, or the best friend she has known for years? And is Carly being entirely honest with either of them?

    Washington’s riveting debut novel dives into the raw emotions of a grieving mother whose quest to heal from a mysterious condition threatens to unravel the lives of those around her.Amanda Jackson has always longed to be a mother. The early weeks of her first pregnancy are a mixture of joy, anticipation, and uncertainty as she and her husband prepare for the journey ahead.Then comes a devastating loss. Even though her doctors tell her otherwise, Amanda believes she’s still pregnant. Her diagnosis is a rare, mysterious condition called pseudocyesis. Betrayed by her mind and body and her marriage strained, Amanda turns to neuroscientist Patrick Davis for answers.Patrick understands the strange twists and turns of the human mind better than anyone. But as he spirals ever deeper into Amanda’s illness, his own homelife crumbles as his wife, Marissa, struggles to cope with her own loss. Marissa’s unique and, some may think, macabre work is her salvation, but it’s pulling her further and further away from Patrick.As the two couples confront the fraught intersection of science, death, and human emotion, they venture into the darkest corners of each other’s lives. What they find there could change them forever.

    A woman grapples with survivor’s guilt after a body is found in her garden bed; an ageing beauty queen contemplates her past; a world champion free-diver disappears during routine training...In moments disquieting or quietly inspiring, this collection considers the complexity of the connections we make—with our family, friends and neighbours, and with those met briefly or never at all.In her timely debut, Emily Paull voices a chorus of characters that reveal and re-evaluate the expectations of women in Australia today—after all, well-behaved women rarely make history.

    After everything she's been through, Georgia knows she deserves someone like him, to make her feel loved. Safe.The only problem is his ex-girlfriend. Luke says Cadence is having trouble accepting their break-up, but Georgia thinks there's more to the story. She also has the feeling someone is watching her.When everything starts to go wrong at work, at home, in her old friendships and her happy new relationship with Luke, Georgia starts to feel truly afraid.Cadence wants what she has. What would she do to get it?And can Georgia trust anyone at all? Praise for Nicola Moriarty 'I devoured it' Marian Keyes 'Accelerates in intensity and sheer originality with every page' Australian Women's Weekly 'Dramatic, mysterious and compelling' Vogue

    The other, she has never seen. But everything in it is accurate. Recent photos of her and her friends, her and her husband, her and her kids. Even of her new kitchen. A photo taken inside her house.She is bemused, angry, and worried. Who was able to do this? Any why?But this, it soon turns out, is just the beginning. It is only now–almost as though someone has been watching, waiting for her to find the profile–that her problems really start…

    Reserves are drying up, local officials have failed to enforce water-rationing regulations, and the relentless heat is causing panic and unrest among the town's citizens.The Drought follows an eclectic cast of characters through a volatile two weeks of greed, lust, and violence, leading to an inevitable and extraordinary climax no one will see coming.And it all begins with Willie Strasbourg stealing a pair of underwear from the girl next door . . .

    Then one evening, as they gather to watch the Miss America Pageant, Linda admits that she aspires to write a novel herself, and the Wednesday Sisters Writing Society is born. The five women slowly, and often reluctantly, start filling journals, sliding pages into typewriters, and sharing their work. In the process, they explore the changing world around them: the Vietnam War, the race to the moon, and a women’s movement that challenges everything they believe about themselves. At the same time, the friends carry one another through more personal changes—ones brought about by infidelity, longing, illness, failure, and success. With one another’s support and encouragement, the Wednesday Sisters begin to embrace who they are and what they hope to become, welcoming readers to experience, along with them, the power of dreaming big.

    In the tradition of Jonathan Tropper and Tom Perrotta comes Matthew Norman's Domestic Violets—a darkly comic family drama about one man’s improbable trials of love, loss, and ambition; of attraction, impotence, and infidelity; and of mid-life malaise, poorly-planned revenge, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

    Carlos Ninguna is seventeen. His father is a snake-handler and Carlos is his apprentice. When a man who may or may not be on the FBI's Most Wanted List moves into the apartment above them, Carlos is faced with a whole tangle of complicated decisions.Anthony Doerr is one of the country's most honored young story writers. His short stories have appeared in the Atlantic, McSweeney's, the Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All-Story, where "The Snake Handler" originally appeared. His most recent collection, Memory Wall, won the 2010 Story Prize.

    Ivy is skint, single, and scared that she isn't a 'hot mess' any more - she's a walking disaster.But one night, Ivy switches her phone off, peels last night's drunken pizza off the sofa, and makes a list. A list that changes everything . . .The new Ivy has a proper job. She goes on fancy dates in wine bars. She's starting to think: maybe 'faking it till you make it' is easy?But then she meets Scott.Curly-haired, sarcastic Scott.Sh*t.

    "A girl comes of age against the knife." So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence--both from outside the family, and also, devastatingly, from within. The lush landscape, rich with birdsong, wild fruit, and blazing stars, becomes a kind of refuge for Betty, but when her family's darkest secrets are brought to light, she has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio. But despite the hardship she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters, and her father's brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all she bears witness to, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write. She recounts the horrors of her family's past and present with pen and paper and buries them deep in the dirt--moments that has stung her so deeply, she could not tell them, until now. Inspired by the life of her own mother, Tiffany McDaniel sets out to free the past by telling this heartbreaking yet magical story--a remarkable novel that establishes her as one of the freshest and most important voices in American fiction.

    Ruth declares that a bad thing will happen in the coming year - she's sure of it. But she cannot see the outline of that thing - she cannot know that it will change their lives utterly, that the shape of their future will be carved into two parts; the before and the after. Or that it will break her heart and break her family.This is Ruth's story. It is the story of before.

    Much better to see it for what it is than to be perennially disappointed.With a hefty new mortgage, a frustrating career as a newspaper columnist and a flailing relationship with a married co-worker, Jo Liddell is resigned to living a less-than-perfect life.That is, until she crosses paths with Joe Bannister – a celebrated foreign correspondent returning home to care for his dying father. Against all her natural instincts, Jo finds herself falling for Joe, and with his help begins to realise that she might deserve to be happy after all. But when she decides to take the plunge and give love a chance, the results are catastrophic. And so Jo must fight hard for everything she never believed in – success, self-acceptance, and above all, real love.

    With Asian society changing around him, like many he remains trapped in a world of poorly paid jobs that just about allow him to keep his head above water but ultimately lead him to murder a migrant worker from Bangladesh.In the tradition of Camus and Houellebecq, Ah Hock’s vivid and compelling description of the years building up to this appalling act of violence – told over several days to a local journalist whose life has taken a different course – is a portrait of an outsider like no other, an anti-nostalgic view of human life and the ravages of hope. It is the work of a writer at the peak of his powers.