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‘Venomous. Bitchy. Brilliant.'Independent Ireland‘Pure escapism! An endearing, moving novel about family, fertility and finding your feet'Emma Gannon, author of Olive‘Drily funny and emotionally gripping, it's the perfect summer read'Vogue____________Ida is a forty-year-old architect, single and starting to panic – all she sees are other people's children, everywhere. On a family holiday in the idyllic Norwegian countryside, she's rapidly regressing, picking fights with her sister Marthe and flirting with Marthe's husband.But when some supposedly wonderful news from Marthe sends tensions rocketing, Ida is forced to finally recognize that there's more than one way to grow up.____________PRAISE FOR GROWN UPS‘Beautiful, slim but powerful'Nell Frizzell, author of The Panic Years‘Exploring the modern themes of dating apps and egg freezing… both hilarious and devastating'Independent‘Blistering comedy… close-to-the-bone commentary on family dysfunction, sibling rivalry and modern motherhood'The Herald‘One of the best novels about singleness, siblings and approaching middle age I've ever read'Jan Carson, author of The Fire Starters‘Sharp, funny, very poignant'Miranda Ward, author of Adrift‘Excoriating'Susannah Dickey, author of Tennis Lessons‘Elegant literary drama wrapped up in a rollicking good holiday read'Kat Brown____________WHAT READERS THINK OF GROWN UPS‘Short, droll and highly readable, Grown Ups is a slice of life that rings painfully true'‘Sensitive, emotional, and littered with the kind of tongue in cheek humour that I love'‘The Scandinavian setting was the icing on the cake, it was perfect escapism!'‘A potent little gem of a novel… Outstanding!'‘A really poignant read with humour and drama scattered amongst the pages'‘An excellent examination of family dynamics… I loved this'‘Painfully honest, and dark with a hint of humour. Grown Ups tells it like it is'‘A brilliant little book that I know I will return to'

A modern day fairytale, inspiring a love towards nature, told in short and engaging chapters.

An Old Order Mennonite couple's vows and beliefs are challenged in this stirring contemporary novel for fans of Cindy Woodsmall or Shelley Shepherd Gray.Anthony and Marty Hirschler are part of an Old Order Mennonite community in Pine Hill, Indiana. The couple has grown apart since a doctor confirmed they would never have children. Marty longs to escape the tight-knit area where large families are valued, and the opportunity to do so arises when her childhood friend, Brooke Spalding, resurfaces with the wild idea of rebuilding a ghost town into a resort community. Brooke hires Anthony to help with the construction, drawing the Hirschlers away from Indiana and into her plan, and then finds herself diagnosed with cancer. Moral complications with Brooke's vision for a casino as part of the resort and the discovery of a runaway teenager hiding on the property open up a world neither the Hirschlers nor Brooke had considered before. Will they be able to overcome their challenges and differences to help the ones among them hurting the most?

Will Margaret's prayers for a child of her own be answered this Christmas or does God have something else in store?After five years of marriage, Margaret's prayers for a baby have gone unanswered. When she and her husband, Thomas travel to Boston to help his ailing father, Margaret happens upon a desperate young woman, sick and lying in the street heavy with child. Unable to simply ignore the woman, Margaret makes the decision to take the woman in. Condemned for her decision to help a woman of ill repute, Margaret does what she knows is right—even if doing the right thing sometimes has life-altering consequences.

Ils ont planté l'antenne quelques années avant que nous achetions la maison du vieux. Depuis, le village se vide. Certains habitants s'en vont, d'autres meurent, d'autres encore disparaissent dans la forêt. Il en reste bien quelques-uns – Fisher l'homme à tout faire qui ne fait rien, Madeleine la serveuse autrefois sexy, l'épicier déterminé à vendre ses cœurs d'artichaut –, mais ceux qui restent ne veulent pas vraiment de nous. Ce n'est pas grave, nous ne sommes pas venus ici pour nous mêler à leurs histoires, mais pour oublier, nous retrouver peut-être. Recommencer. Nous sommes venus ici pour ne pas être ailleurs. Nous n'en repartirons peut-être pas.

Girl Imagined by Chance is a critifictional novel about a couple who find themselves having created a make-believe daughter (and soon a make-believe life to accompany her) in order to appease their friends, family, and the culture of reproduction. Structured around twelve photographs from a single roll of film, the book explores the nature of photography and the questions that nature raises about the notions of the simulated and the real, the media-ization of consciouness, originality, self construction, and the way we all continually fashion our faces into masks for the next shot. At its heart, Girl Imagined by Chance investigates the mystery of self-knowledge. The prevailing metaphor and structural device of photograpy examines the way images, in their magical ability to mimic memory, ultimately mock and eradicate it. The seemigly stable and fixed individual past turns out to be as protean and unknowable as the future. The body becomes strangely dispensable, perpetually adrift in a cybernetic world of hyperlinks and interfaces.

Childhood sweethearts Kinna and Jimmy Henley had simple dreams–marriage, children, a house by the sea…everything they needed for happily ever after. What they didn't plan on was years of infertility, stealing those dreams, crushing their hopes.Now, all that's left is the memory of young love, and the desperate need for a child to erase the pain. Until…Kinna rescues an elderly woman from the sea, and the threads of the past, present, and future weave together to reveal the wonder of one final hope. One final chance to follow not their dreams, but God's plan.Can they embrace the redemptive power of love before it's too late? Or will their love be washed away like the castles they once built upon the sand? The past whispers to the present. And the future shivers. What if tomorrow never comes?

“I was married eleven years before I started imagining how different life could be if my husband were dead....”At thirty-eight, Jessie Maddox subscribes to House Beautiful, Southern Living, even Psychology Today. She has a comfortable life in Glenville, Georgia, with Turner, the most reliable, responsible husband in the world. But after the storybook romance, “happily ever after” never came. Now the housewife who once wanted to be Martha Stewart before there was a Martha Stewart is left to wonder: Where did the marriage go wrong? Why can't she stop picturing herself as the perfect grieving widow?As Jessie dives headlong into her midlife crisis, she is aided and abetted by a colorful cast of characters in the true Southern tradition: her best friend and next door neighbor Donna, who is having a wild adulterous affair with a younger man; Wanda McNab, the sweater-knitting, cookie-baking grandmother who is charged with killing her abusive husband. Then there's Jessie's eccentric family. Her younger sister Ellen, born to be a guest on Jerry Springer, has taken her seven-year-old son and squawking pet birds and left her husband “for good this time”... while their mother crosses the dirty words out of library books and alerts everyone to the wonderful bargains at Winn-Dixie, often at the same time. And then there's the stuffed green headless duck... When a trip home to the small town of her childhood raises more questions than it answers, Jessie is forced to face the startling truth head-on–and confront the tragedy that has shadowed her heart and shaken her faith in love... and the future.From a brilliant new voice in fiction, here is a darkly comic novel full of revelation and insight. The danger of secrets and the power of confession... The pull of family, no matter how crazy... The fate of wedlock when one can't find the key... Jeanne Braselton weaves these potent themes into a funny, poignant, utterly engaging story of a woman at the crossroads–and the unforgettable journey she must take to get back home.

There's a woman here who wishes to be introduced to you Mr Pemberton... I should caution you, though. She has frightened off every other bachelor in Boston... Just remember you were warned, just as I've warned her. 1929. George and Serena Pemberton arrive in the wilds of the North Carolina mountains to build a life together in a rural logging town. Unlike any woman the timber empire has ever seen, Serena oversees crews, hunts rattlesnakes and saves her husband's life in the wilderness. But when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, the Pemberton's intensely passionate marriage begins to unravel. A course of events unfolds that will change the lives of everyone in their rural community and bring this riveting tale of love and revenge to its shocking reckoning.

“A story as brooding and insular as the Tasmanian town in which it is set.... Expertly crafted, the novel illuminates love's craggy depths.” —Publishers Weekly Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers'Prize Torn by tragedy from his early life on a remote farm in Tasmania, Alex Dove has returned to the rugged island off Australia's southern coast years later to start over. A chance encounter with quiet, alluring Merridy Bowman—a young woman caring for her ailing father and similarly haunted by a tangled and catastrophic history—results in marriage, as two damaged souls unite to build a home, family, and livelihood far removed from civilization's bustle. Soon they are drawn into the unpredictable dynamics of small-town island life—and into the destructive orbit of an unscrupulous real estate agent who maintains a secret hold over both Doves. But when a shipwreck off the shore thrusts a troubled, possibly criminal teenage castaway into their world, Alex and Merridy's tenuously forged happiness is suddenly at grave risk, as they are forced to confront deeper questions about the true meaning of fulfillment. “Gripping... exhilarating... cathartic.”—The Times “Elegant and enjoyable.” —The Spectator “A very good novel indeed.” —The Scotsman

At thirty-seven, Jane Howe is pretty sure she has attained the perfect life: a well-paying job, fantastic friends, family close by (but not too close), and a Greenwich Village apartment that makes visitors drool with envy. But that's before she sees the perfect child. There he sits in his stroller, angelic and beautiful, magnetic and serene– and he makes Jane question everything she has and everything she thought she wanted. Suddenly all she can see are babies and pregnant woman everywhere. Were there always so many of them? And while there was once a man in her life–her one true love, Sam, gone from this world too soon–there is no man now. Jane must make a choice: possibly become a bitter and childless old lady, letting her biological clock tick on'till menopause, or tend the ache in her heart now, by becoming a single mother. As Jane struggles to make the most important decision of her life, friends and family offer no shortage of opinions. There's Ray, her “hubstitute” and gay best friend who would be jealous of any kid who got Jane as a mom; Sheila, her sister, who went from zero to sixty when she eloped with Raoul–who had two young twin sons– and has mixed feelings about being a new mommy; her strict, Catholic father who can't imagine what level of hell Jane would banish herself to if she becomes a single mother; and the women of Families with Children from China who are preparing to adopt orphan daughters–without a man in sight. Just as she thinks she's made up her mind, Jane discovers one small wrench in her plans: handsome, charming, funny Peter, who just happens to be (unhappily) married.... And Baby Makes Two is a heartbreakingly honest, wonderfully addictive, and funny novel about love and loss, family and friendship. Judy Sheehan, co-creator of the smash hit Tony n'Tina's Wedding, has perfectly captured the delights and dilemmas of the scariest job in the world: motherhood.From the Hardcover edition.

On the heels of her three runaway hits, Bookends, Mr. Maybe, and Jemima J, Jane Green delivers a sparkling, sexy tale about the complexities of modern motherly love. Bestselling author Jane Green has won the hearts of thousands of readers with her fresh take on single life and the dating jungle. Now in Babyville, she applies her golden touch to the next phase of a girl's life, in an irresistible new novel about two young women coping with the chimes of their biological clocks, and one independent glamour-girl who tries to tune hers out.Meet Julia, a wildly successful television producer who appears to have the picture-perfect life. But beneath the surface, things are not as perfect as they seem. Stuck in a loveless relationship with her boyfriend, Mark, Julia thinks a baby is the answer... but she may want a baby more than she wants her boyfriend. Will a trip to New York City with a jet-setting friend—and all the glittering energy and eligible men the city brings—help her discover what she really needs? Maeve, on the other hand, is allergic to commitment. A feisty, red-haired, high-power career girl, she cherishes her ability to do just as she pleases and breaks out in a rash every time she passes a stroller. But when her no-strings-attached nightlife leads to an unexpected pregnancy, her reaction may be just as unexpected.And then there's Samantha—happily married and eager to be the perfect June Cleaveresque mother. But baby George brings only exhaustion, extra pounds, and marital strife to her once tidy life. Is having an affair with a friend's incredibly sexy husband the answer? By turns witty, rollicking, and tender, Babyville isn't really a story about babies—it's about three friends whose lives are suddenly turned upside-down by that life-changing event that hangs over the head of every girl: motherhood.

Margaret Rose is a talented but nervous violinist given to bouts of stage fright and unrequited love; Webster Hale is a biologist who, on principle, refuses to kill animals in order to study them. In Angels Go Naked, a novel told in stories, Cornelia Nixon, a writer whose gift is apparent on every page, follows this vexed love story and the collision course they call their life together.Their connection is never in doubt, though Webster is appalled by the urban underbelly of Chicago, which Margy calls home. He refuses to have children because the earth is overrun with humans, and Margy feels compelled to expiate an early abortion by having a live child. Webster's gloomy view of global disaster threatens to triumph in the final story, as their close friend Calvin is dying of AIDS beside a moribund Lake Michigan. Meanwhile, the one child Webster has agreed to conceive appears destined for stillbirth because Margy herself was poisoned as a fetus by misguided medical intervention.At the end of this sad, funny, moving tale, there may be hope, as life and love prove unexpectedly resilient, even in the twenty–first century.