Family Humor

England, 1976. Mrs Creasy is missing, and The Avenue is alive with whispers. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, 10-year-olds Grace and Tilly decide to take matters into their own hands. And as the cul-de-sac starts giving up its secrets, the amateur detectives will find much more than they imagined.

Ils n'ont qu'une addiction : le sang. Mais depuis plus de vingt ans, ils ont décidé de renoncer à leur péché mignon et de se désintoxiquer. Pas facile d'être un vampire urbain au XXIe siècle ! Dans une banlieue british tout ce qu'il y a de plus respectable, les Radley essayent désespérément de se comporter comme « des gens normaux ». Mais des vampires de souche peuvent-ils définitivement refouler leurs désirs et leurs instincts ? Pas sûr.

Charlene Ann Baumbich—award-winning journalist and best-selling author of the Dearest Dorothy novels—launches a series of heartwarming stories linked by the swirling flakes of one special snowglobe. In this charming tale of second chances, renewed faith, and forgiveness, a captivating heirloom triggers inexplicable changes.

We have descriptors for many periods of life, but there is a period of profound change that many women face, often in their late 20s to early 40s, that does not yet have a name. Nell Frizzell is calling this period of flux “the panic years", and it is often characterized by a preoccupation with one major question: Should I have a baby? Frizzell uses personal stories from her own experiences in the panic years to illuminate the larger social and cultural trends and gives voice to the uncertainty, confusion, and urgency that tends to characterize this time of life.

Once more we catch up with the delightful goings-on in the fictitious 44 Scotland Street from Alexander McCall Smith. With customary charm and deftness, Alexander McCall Smith gives us another installment in this popular series, now running in its ninth season in The Scotsman. Anything could happen to Bertie and the gang....

In the remarkable, bizarre, and heart-wrenching summer before Cullen Witter’s senior year of high school, he is forced to examine everything he thinks he understands about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town. His cousin overdoses; his town becomes absurdly obsessed with the alleged reappearance of an extinct woodpecker; and most troubling of all, his sensitive, gifted fifteen-year-old brother, Gabriel, suddenly and inexplicably disappears.

If you could repeat one year of your life, what would you do differently? This heartwarming and hilarious novel features three best friends who get the chance to return to the year they turned 40, the year that altered all of their lives in ways big and small - and get the opportunity to change their future. But it doesn't take long for all three women to learn that reliving a life and making different decisions leads only to new problems and consequences and that the mistakes they made may in fact have been the best choices.

Smarting from her recently canceled wedding and about to turn forty, Laurie Sassalyn returns to her Maine hometown of Calcasset to handle the estate of her great-aunt Dot, a spirited adventurer who lived to be ninety-three. Alongside boxes of Polaroids and pottery, a mysterious wooden duck shows up at the bottom of a cedar chest. Laurie’s curiosity is piqued, especially after she finds a love letter to the never-married Dot that ends with the line “And anyway, if you’re ever desperate, there are always ducks, darling.”

George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood or of manly bonhomie. “The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely.” Some things in life can’t be ignored, however: his tempestuous daughter Katie’s deeply inappropriate boyfriend Ray, for instance, or the sudden appearance of a red circular rash on his hip.

It’s almost Christmas and Bunny McGarry is not in the festive spirit. His mood is not improved when an old friend becomes the victim of a violent assault and, for reasons he can’t understand, the police force he is a member of has decided not to investigate. Getting to the bottom of the case ends up putting him on the wrong side of some powerful people.

When sixty-five-year-old Bindu Desai inherits a million dollars, she’s astounded—and horrified. The windfall threatens to expose a shameful mistake from her youth. On an impulse, Bindu quickly spends it on something unexpected: a condo in a posh retirement community in Florida. The impulsive decision blindsides Bindu’s daughter-in-law, Aly. At forty-seven, Aly still shares a home with Bindu even after her divorce from Bindu’s son. But maybe this change is just the push Aly needs to fight for her own dreams.

Precocious six-year-old Bertie joins the scouts to escape his mother, Matthew learns to handle the challenges of marriage, and Domenica deals with loneliness. Even four-legged Cyril gets in on the action, finding himself a bit of canine romance.

Domestic bliss seems in short supply at 44 Scotland Street. Over at the Pollocks', dad, Stuart, is harbouring a secret about a secret society and Bertie is feeling kind of blue. Having had enough of his neurotic hot-housing mother, he puts himself up for adoption on eBay. Will he go to the highest bidder or will he have to take matters into his own hands? Will the lovelorn Big Lou find true love on the Internet? And will Angus Lordie and Domenica make it up the aisle? Catch up with all your favorite faces down in 44 Scotland Street as we follow their daily pursuit of a little happiness.

Twelve-year-old Norman Foreman and his best friend, Jax, are a legendary comedic duo in waiting, with a plan to take their act all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe. But when Jax dies, Norman decides the only fitting tribute is to perform at the festival himself. The problem is, Norman’s not the funny one. Jax was.

Diane is 48 years old and - according to her husband - boring...which is apparently the reason that he had an affair and left her. After taking the charge to heart, Diane decides to undertake a ribald and highly entertaining journey that will help her restore trust in herself and others. An astute commentary on women and girls, gender differences, and the curious institution of marriage in the 21st century, Autopsy of a Boring Wife is a wonderfully fresh and engaging novel of the pitfalls and missteps of an apparently “boring” life that could be any of ours.

It’s March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold—anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed—has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she’d marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy, a year and a half out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn while Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.

The four Jacobson children were raised to respect the value of a dollar. Their mother reused tea bags and refused to pay retail; their father taught them to budget before he taught them to ride a bike. And yet, now that they’re adults, their financial lives are in disarray. The siblings reunite when their newly widowed father puts their Jersey Shore beach house on the market. Packing up childhood memories isn’t easy, especially when there’s other drama brewing.

Self-deprecating and with an acerbic wit, TikTok star Clara Batten aka @rabatts is every middle-class mother trying to get through the day without another sh*t on the staircase or panic drive to McDonald’s. In Gin and Phonics, she talks candidly about the ups, downs and hilarious reality of trying to parent two small people and fulfil her lifelong dream of becoming an actress without losing her bl**dy mind.

Meet Tom. Or Dr O’Grady, as he used to be called. When you pass him on the street, most people don’t even give him a second glance. You see, Tom isn’t living his best life. Burdened by grief, he’s only got his loyal dog, Bette Davis, for company and a rucksack containing his whole world. Then there’s Ruth and her son, DJ, who no longer have a place to call home. But Ruth believes that you can change the world by helping one person at a time - and Tom needs her help. There are a thousand ways to find your home - you just need to be brave enough to look for them.

Sam Bennett is the last of a dying breed, a former Mad Man, now made redundant after 30 years at the same advertising agency. Left with his awards and a case of Bulgarian whiskey (which he still can’t remember buying), Sam retreats to his home, awaits the summer arrival of his daughter and crazy son-in-law, Muller, is plagued by panic attacks and has an incident involving a pressed ham on a liquor store window with a young security guard named Max. .