From the outside, Essie's life looked idyllic. But few of her friends know that Essie once walked away from her newborn, asleep in her carriage in a park. Diaster was avoided and Essie got better, but she still fears what lurks inside her, even as her daughter gets older and she has a second baby. When a woman named Isabelle moves in next door to Essie, she is an immediate object of curiosity in the neighboorhood ---- single, childless, and with a...

Crocker County crowns a new Corn Queen every year, but Jane Willow's the one you would remember. She can't forget Iowa, either. Even though she fled to LA to become a film critic years ago, home was always there behind her. But when a family tragedy happens, she's forced to drive back to Crocker County. The rolling farmlands can't much hide the things she left behind: the best friend she abandoned who now runs a meatloaf hotline, the childhood front...

In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti's intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer...

"Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn't exist anywhere outside of the movies. But then, through the mist on a bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man that she knows, instantly, is the one. Their eyes meet, there's a moment of pure magic ... and then her bus drives away. Certain they're fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London, hoping for another glimpse of what she trusts...

""Abbi Waxman is both irreverent and thoughtful."--#1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Giffin And now the author of The Garden of Small Beginnings returns with a hilarious and poignant new novel about four families, their neighborhood carpool, and the affair that changes everything. At any given moment in other people's houses, you can find...repressed hopes and dreams...moments of unexpected joy...someone making love on the floor to a man...

"Keeping secrets is a dangerous game. When Sir James Harrison, one the greatest actors of his generation, passes away at the age of ninety-five, he leaves behind not just a heartbroken family but also a secret so shocking, it could rock the English establishment to its core. Joanna Haslam, an up-and-coming reporter, is assigned to cover the legendary actor's funeral, attended by glitzy celebrities of every background. But Joanna stumbles on something...

After losing her husband, Harold, and her beloved grandson, Cody, within the past year, Louisa has two choices. She can fade away on her Indiana family farm, where her companionship comes courtesy of her aging chickens and an argumentative cat. Or, she can concoct A Plan. Louisa, a retired schoolteacher who's as smart, sassy, and irreverent as ever, isn't the fading away type. The drunk driver who killed Cody got off scot-free by lying about a deer...

Jessica Chamberlain, newly separated and living with her two sons in a small Iowa town, can't believe that a tragedy in another state could have anything to do with her. But when her phone rings one quiet morning, her world is shattered. As she tries to pick up the pieces and make sense of what went wrong, Jess begins to realize that a tragic death is just the beginning. Soon she is caught in a web of lies and half-truths--and she's horrified to learn...

The only child of a single mother, Nina Hill has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book. When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by and are...

Regretting nothing except the relationships she has lost, upon learning she has only three months to live, Jennifer writes cathartic letters to the most significant people in her life before she is confronted by unexpected surprises.