Pieces of Happily Ever After

What happens after “happily ever after”? Alice Hirsh is about to find out…

Alice, a former New Yorker who thought she’d never feel at home in the bizarre world of the San Fernando Valley, was adapting, raising her 5-year-old daughter while trying to keep her job and make her new house a home. When her attorney husband lands a trophy client – box-office queen Rose Maris – things begin to look up. Then Alex starts working late – a lot. He crunches his paunch into a six-pack and trades his Gap ensembles for Armani everything.

Soon, Rose and Alex’s affair blazes in the tabloids and Alice is plunged into trash-gossip hell. Her life crumbles around her as she navigates her newly single self through suburban LA –a place rife with porn stars, psycho soccer moms and nutty neighbors.

Is there a chance to wrest Alex from the Sexiest Woman Alive? And if so… would Alice want him back? And what about George–her college sweatheart? Or Johnny, a walking charm-bomb paparazzo? As Alice inventories the rubble of her life, she desperately searches for her bearings and is forced to ask herself what she really wants from life, love and herself.

Sweet as Sin

John Murphy is tormented by nightmares. A bestselling young-adult author, he writes the ultimate fantasy: stories where good always triumphs. He knows better. His past has shown him the worst in people—and in himself. When he moves next door to the sexy, vibrant Livvy—a woman completely unlike his usual one-night stands—he’s driven to explore every curve of her delicious body.
Pastry chef Livvy knows that giving in to the temptation that is John Murphy won’t lead to anything permanent, but she deserves a passionate summer fling. John discovers she’s as sweet as the confections she bakes while Livvy slowly unravels his secrets. But what will happen when she uncovers them all?
104,200 words

What My Mother Gave Me

New York Times Bestseller: “A winning collection” of essays by daughters including Elinor Lipman, Margo Jefferson, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Lisa See, and more (Kirkus Reviews).
Each of these thirty-one “beautifully crafted” essays (Publishers Weekly) is a story about a mother’s gift to a daughter—one that touched her, taught her something, or symbolized a unique bond. Whether a gift was meant to keep a daughter warm, instruct her in the ways of womanhood, encourage her talents, or just remind her of a mother’s love, each story gets to the heart of a relationship.
Rita Dove recalls the box of polish that inspired her to paint her nails in the stripes and polka dots she wears to this day. Lisa See writes about the gift of writing from her mother, Carolyn See. Cecilia Muñoz remembers the wok her mother gave her and a lifetime of family meals. Judith Hillman Paterson revisits the year of sobriety her mother bequeathed to her when Paterson was nine, the year before her mother died of alcoholism. Abigail Pogrebin describes her middle-aged bat mitzvah, for which her mother provided flowers after a lifetime of guilt for skipping her daughter’s religious education. Margo Jefferson writes about her mother’s gold dress from the posh department store where they could finally shop as black women.
Collectively, the pieces have a force that feels as elemental as the tides: outpourings of lightness and darkness; love and rage; joy and grief. From literary prize winners, bestselling authors, and other celebrated women, they are “as varied and unexpected and eloquent and moving as mother love itself” (Cathleen Schine, New York Times-bestselling author of The Grammarians).
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The Beggar Bride

Desperate for a new life, a London woman engineers a cunning deception “in this tangled tale that twists and turns up to the very end” (Booklist).
 
Angela Harper’s life has never been simple. She’s an orphan who spent her childhood in foster homes. Her handsome, charming husband Billy can’t hold down a job. And they’re both stuck in a grimy London flat with no prospects for their future beyond the periodic welfare check. That is, until Ange concocts a lie that will change their lives. Her con targets the wealthy, twice-divorced businessman Fabian Ormerod, whom, with the approval of her husband, she is determined to trick into a very advantageous marriage—with a quick divorce to follow.
 
Gillian White’s cutting, sardonic style unfurls in The Beggar Bride, as she needles England’s stiff upper crust, the titans of business, and the idle poor below them.

Town House

Jack Madigan is, by many accounts, blessed. He can still effortlessly turn a pretty head. And thanks to his legendary rock star father, he lives an enviable existence in a once-glorious, now-crumbling Boston town house with his teenage son, Harlan. But there is one tiny drawback: Jack is an agoraphobe. As long as his dad’s admittedly dwindling royalties keep rolling in, Jack’s condition isn’t a problem. But then the money runs out . . . and all hell breaks loose.

The bank is foreclosing. Jack’s ex is threatening to take Harlan to California. And Lucinda, the little girl next door, won’t stay out of his kitchen . . . or his life. To save his sanity, Jack’s path is clear, albeit impossible—he must outwit the bank’s adorably determined real estate agent, win back his house, keep his son at home, and, finally, with Lucinda’s help, find a way back to the world outside his door.