Storied matchmaker and Nantucket resident Dabney Kimball has her own life and match turned upside down when her true love of twenty-seven years prior returns to the island. "48-year-old Nantucketer Dabney Kimball Beech has always had a gift for matchmaking. Some call her ability mystical, while others - like her husband, celebrated economist John Boxmiller Beech, and her daughter, Agnes, who is clearly engaged to the wrong man - call it meddlesome,...

“Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are.” In this vivid portrait of a single day in a woman’s life, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of preparation for a party while in her mind she is something much more than a perfect society hostess. As she readies her house for friends and neighbors, she is flooded with remembrances of the past—the passionate loves of her carefree...

Maggie and Sylvie are perfect strangers: two very different women, living very different lives on opposite coasts. But they share more in common than they could ever imagine. Both women have beautiful children on the verge of flying the nest, the home they worked hard to build and always longed for, and a handsome and devoted husband they can't believe belongs to them. Both women think their lives are seamlessly secure, but they couldn't be more...

"Here is Cheryl, a tightly-wound, vulnerable woman who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat. She is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six, who sometimes recurs as other people's babies. Cheryl is also obsessed with Phillip, a philandering board member at the women's self-defense nonprofit where she works. She believes they've been making love for many lifetimes, though they have yet to consummate in this one. When Cheryl's bosses...

It is True Dickinson's birthday and her best friends have gathered on this snowy night to celebrate. True has never felt more alone. Though her small business is thriving and her young son is happy, the death of her husband eight years ago has left an empty space in her life that friends and family cannot fill. Are youth and beauty slipping away while True is busily taking care of everyone else? An accident the night of her birthday will answer that...

Four American women become unexpected friends during a magical year in Tuscany marked by a writer's complicated relationship with the subject of her biography, long-postponed dreams, and shifting senses of adventure and bravery. Kit Raine, an American writer living in Tuscany, is working on a biography of a friend. Her work is interrupted by the arrival of Julia, Camille, and Susan, all of whom have launched a recent and spontaneous friendship. Susan,...

"In the eagerly anticipated follow-up to Laurie Gelman's "irreverent and hilarious" (The New York Post) hit Class Mom, brash, lovable Jen Dixon is back with a new class and her work cut out for her If you've ever been a room parent or school volunteer, Jen Dixon is your hero. She says what every class mom is really thinking, whether in her notoriously frank emails or standup-worthy interactions with the micromanaging PTA President and the gamut of...

Workaholic Henrietta Wegner can feel her edge beginning to dull in middle age. Once the company's hottest mergers and acquisitions executive, Henri can see the ambitious and impossibly young up-and-comers gunning for her job. When her boss makes it clear she'll be starting the New Year unemployed unless she can close a big deal before the holidays, Henri impulsively tells him that she can convince her aging parents to sell Wegner's, their iconic Frankenmuth,...

Since opening up their day spa, The Haven, the wonderful women of the Hot Flash Club have been busy indulging the beleaguered, nerve-frazzled throngs. Now, in Nancy Thayer's hilarious new Hot Flash novel, it's the friends' turn to grab some soothing, and much-deserved R&R. When a long-time Haven client asks the gals to housesit her Nantucket hideaway for the summer, they're beyond thrilled; the cozy island enclave is the perfect place to shop, swim,...

The world has changed around seventy-nine-year-old librarian Millicent Carmichael, aka Missy. Though quick to admit that she often found her roles as a housewife and mother less than satisfying, Missy once led a bustling life driven by two children, an accomplished and celebrated husband, and a Classics degree from Cambridge. Now her husband is gone, her daughter is estranged after a shattering argument, and her son has moved to his wife's native...