Women Humor

In Jilly Cooper's latest, raciest novel, Rupert Campbell-Black takes centre stage in the cutthroat world of flat racing. Rupert is consumed by one obsession: that Love Rat, his adored grey horse, be proclaimed champion stallion. He longs to trounce Roberto's Revenge, the stallion owned by his detested rival, Cosmo Rannaldini, which means abandoning his racing empire at Penscombe and his darling wife, Taggie, and chasing winners in the richest races worldwide, from Dubai to Los Angeles to Melbourne.

It's 1969 and Palm Springs socialite Maxine Simmons is planning a Thanksgiving feast to rival Nixon's stealthy maneuvers in the White House and Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon. With a catered menu to die for and a dining room that looks like it's been ripped from the glossy pages of a magazine, her entrance to high society is all but assured. Then comes the humiliation of being dumped by her husband of 17 years. Banished to Arizona, the disgraced Maxine languishes in exile. But then she suddenly gets an idea of how she can win it all back.

Drew thought she was destined to rise above her small New Jersey hometown and make it as a serious journalist in New York City. But now she’s back in Clearfield, pushing thirty, newly single, and living with her father. After a chance encounter at the grocery store, she reconnects with her ex-best friend, Steph, who married young and never left their hometown. But Steph looks … good. She’s tanned, clear-skinned, and glowing. She drives an expensive car and wears only name-brands. What’s her secret?

When she asks her dependable husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, to fix her tiny white van, Precious Ramotswe fears he might just sell the vehicle and buy her something more modern. And so he does. But this will not do. So Precious tries to track her beloved van down - and learns it has already been stolen from its new owner.

Natalie is a Bloomingdale's salesgirl mooning over her lawyer ex-boyfriend, who's engaged to someone else after just two months. Felicia has been quietly in love with her boss for 17 years and has one night to finally make the feeling mutual. Andie is a private detective who specializes in gathering evidence on cheating husbands - a skill she unfortunately learned from her own life - and lands a case that may restore her faith in true love.

Jenna Jones, former It-girl fashion editor, is broke and desperate for a second chance. When she’s dumped by her longtime fiancé and fired from Darling magazine, she begs for a job from her old arch nemesis, Darcy Vale. The beyond-bitchy publisher of StyleZine.com, Darcy agrees to hire her rival - only because her fashion site needs a jolt from Jenna’s old school cred. But Jenna soon realizes she’s in over her head.

When Daphne arrives in Berlin, the last thing she expects is to run into more drama than she left behind. Of course, she knew she'd need to do the usual: make friends, acquire lovers, grapple with German and a whole new way of life. She even expected the long nights gorging alone on family-sized jars of Nutella, and the pitfalls of online dating in another language. The paranoia, the second-guessing of her every choice, the covert behaviors? Probably come with the territory. But one night, when Daphne is alone in her apartment, something strange, unnerving and entirely unexpected intervenes.

After being duped out of her life savings in Germany, Val Fremden retreats home to Florida with more than just her pride in tatters. Broke, jobless, divorced, and 45, she knows starting over won’t be easy. But when her only friend suddenly turns up dead, Val begins to wonder if the world is out to get her.

Poor Meg Langslow. She's blessed in so many ways. Michael, her boyfriend, is a handsome, delightful heartthrob who adores her. She's a successful blacksmith, known for her artistic wrought-iron creations. But somehow Meg's road to contentment is more rutted and filled with potholes than seems fair.

Becky Brandon thinks that having a daughter is a dream come true: a shopping friend for life! But two-year-old Minnie has a quite different approach to shopping. The toddler creates havoc everywhere she goes, from Harrods to her own christening. On top of everything else, Becky and Luke are still living with her parents (the deal on house #4 has fallen through), when suddenly there’s a huge nationwide financial crisis.

Mma Ramotswe reconnects with an old friend who has been having problems with her daughter. Though Precious feels compelled to lend a hand, she discovers that getting involved in family affairs is always a delicate proposition. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni finds himself embroiled in familial drama as well, when one of his clients asks for help evicting an unwanted houseguest who turns out to be the man's own brother. Elsewhere, Charlie and Fanwell are also involved in tricky matters of the heart, as Queenie-Queenie, Charlie's girlfriend, seems to have transferred her affections to Fanwell.

From the best-selling author of The Devil Wears Prada and When Life Gives You Lululemons comes a highly entertaining, sharply observed novel about sisters, their perfect lives...and their perfect lies.

Lisa Edwards, top London magazine editor, has been fantasizing about promotion to New York. Instead, she's asked to launch a new women's magazine in Dublin. She thinks nothing could be worse - until she meets her new staff. They're friendly, helpful, and enthusiastic - in other words, they wouldn't last two minutes in London!

She's old enough to be his mother. Alice has always looked young for her age, even with her graying hair and her dowdy New Jersey housewife style. Make that ex-housewife: Now that her husband's gone and her daughter is grown, Alice is in desperate need of a whole new life. So she lets her best friend Maggie, a hip New York City artist, transform her on New Year's Eve. Soon, thanks to the wonders of hair dye and tight jeans, Alice looks really young, as one night in a Manhattan bar confirms.

Far North Queensland, 1993: at 74, former cane farmer Grace Maud is feeling her age, and her isolation, and thinks the best of life may be behind her. Elsewhere in town, high school teacher Patricia has given up on her dreams of travel and adventure and has moved back home to look after her ageing parents, while cafe owner Dorothy is struggling to accept that she may never have the baby she and her husband so desperately want. Each woman has an unspoken need: reconnection. And that's how they find themselves at Orange Blossom House, surrounded by perfumed rainforest.

Jojo Harvey is a literary agent whose star is on the rise. In love with both her married boss and her burgeoning career, not much distracts her. Until she finds herself representing two women who used to be best friends. Used to be....

FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare is known for her fierce dedication and discipline on the job, chasing down the world’s most wanted criminals and putting them behind bars. Her boss thinks she is tenacious and ambitious; her friends think she is tough, stubborn, and maybe even a bit obsessed. And while Kate has made quite a name for herself for the past five years the only name she’s cared about is Nicolas Fox - an international crook she wants in more ways than one.

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle - and people in general - has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands.

Here are the three things the Sullivan family knows to be true: the Chicago Cubs will always be the underdogs; historical progress is inevitable; and their grandfather, Bud, founder of JP Sullivan’s, will always make the best burgers in Oak Park. But when, over the course of three strange months, the Cubs win the World Series, Trump is elected president, and Bud drops dead, suddenly everyone in the family finds themselves doubting all they hold dear.

Meg Langslow is plying her blacksmith's trade at Caerphilly Days, a festival inspired by the town's sudden notoriety as "The Town That Mortgaged Its Jail". The lender has foreclosed on all Caerphilly's public buildings, and all employees have evacuated - except one. Phineas Throckmorton, town clerk, has been barricaded in the courthouse basement for over a year. But the lender seems increasingly determined to evict him, and may succeed after one of its executives is found shot, apparently from inside the basement.