Women Humor

Jen Dixon is not your typical Kansas City kindergarten class mom - or mom in general. Jen already has two college-age daughters by two different (probably) musicians, and it's her second time around the class mom block with five-year-old Max - this time with a husband and father by her side. Though her best friend and PTA president sees her as the "wisest" candidate for the job (or oldest), not all of the other parents agree.

Rachel Klein never meant to kiss her creative writing professor, but with his long eyelashes, his silky hair, and the sad, beautiful life he laid bare on Twitter, she does, and the kiss is very nice. Zahid Azzam never planned to become a houseguest in his student's sprawling Connecticut home, but with the sparkling swimming pool, the endless supply of Whole Foods strawberries, and Rachel's beautiful mother, he does, and the home is very nice.

Once again, Fannie Flagg gives us a story of richly human characters, the saving graces of the once-maligned middle classes and small-town life, and the daily contest between laughter and tears. Fannie truly writes from the heartland, and her storytelling is, to quote Time, "utterly irresistible."

Lucy Resnick's nerves are as tight as a tea cozy. Her new goats, Hot Lips and Gidget, keep making a break for the town square, her truck is dying, and her boyfriend's gorgeous ex-wife is in town for the holidays. Worse, someone's digging holes on her land...and uprooting her peach orchard and dewberry patch in the process. Lucy needs additional holiday stress like she needs a blow to the head - which she receives one night, courtesy of the mystery digger.

When Imogen returns to work at Glossy after six months away, she can barely recognize her own magazine. Eve, fresh out of Harvard Business School, has fired "the gray hairs", put the managing editor in a supply closet, stopped using the landlines, and hired a bevy of manicured and questionably attired underlings who text and tweet their way through meetings.

Suze has a niggling feeling that her husband Karl's marital sat-nav has taken a wrong turn and led him down the road to temptation. What's a suspicious wife to do? Mel knows that her sweet, docile husband Joe would never, ever cheat. But when Suze, her sister-in-law, hires a honeytrap to test Karl, the results blow Mel's world apart. Mel, Joe, Suze, Karl. They're family. They're friends. And they're about to discover whether or not they can navigate those other f-words - fidelity and forgiveness.

Pamela is a newly retired teacher with time on her hands. She’s finding it hard to muster enthusiasm for what’s ahead: exhausting postdivorce dating rituals and an uneasy relationship with her emotionally stunted, live-at-home son. But for Pamela, there’s a surprise in store that could challenge the status quo and, against all expectations, make life interesting again.

After putting their own needs on the back burner to raise their families, Sylvie, Doris, Alice, and Marge struggle to find purpose now that their children are grown, and their husbands are gone. Loneliness pushes them together while they knit away the rest of their days. Then one night, a whiskey-filled pact catapults these ladies onto the adventure of a lifetime. Each widow gets one wish, one wild adventure she’s dreamed of doing her whole life. With their wishes tucked away on notes inside their knitting basket, they pull them out, vowing to do whatever it takes to help each other.

Felicity Lewis' 50th birthday party in her newly renovated home, loving husband and daughter Greta by her side, is going off with a bang when disaster strikes. Her father, Franklyn, with his usual impeccable timing, has keeled over and died. For some members of the family, his wife Hazel, for example, Franklyn's death is not the great loss it first appears to be. But when his toxic and inexplicable will is read out, it becomes clear that long-buried secrets are about to surface, starting with the astonishing reappearance of Hazel's long-lost sister.

When 82-year-old Lil decides to book herself, her 65-year-old daughter, Cassie, and her friend Maggie on a bus trip across Europe, she hopes for a little adventure to counteract the monotony of life. Along with three members of the Salterley Tennis Club and the Jolly Weaver football team, whose ideas of a good time are rather different to Lil’s and strikingly at odds with each other’s, the merry band of travellers set out on their great adventure.

When Lucy Brennan, a Miami Beach personal fitness trainer, disarms a gunman chasing two frightened homeless men, the police and the breaking-news cameras are not far behind and, within hours, Lucy is a media hero. The solitary eye-witness is the depressed and overweight Lena Sorensen, who becomes obsessed with Lucy and signs up as her client - though she seems more interested in the trainer’s body than her own. When the two women find themselves more closely aligned, and can’t stop thinking about the sex lives of Siamese twins, the real problems start....

Patty Wyatt is a fun-loving, headstrong, and intelligent girl who gets herself into mischief and learns valuable lessons, both in and out of the classroom. Now you can hear the complete story in this box set, from Patty’s boarding school days to her college life. Just Patty was masterfully crafted by Jean Webster as a prequel to her classic title, When Patty Went to College.

When Eli leaves the cramped Bulgarian apartment he shares with Elizabeth, his more organized and successful wife, he discovers that he now inhabits her body. Not only have he and his wife traded bodies, but Elizabeth, living as Eli, has disappeared without a trace. What follows is Eli’s search across Europe and to America for his missing wife—and a roving, no-holds-barred exploration of gender and embodied experience.

As Hollywood prepares for its most glamorous evening, five actresses compete to see who will claim the top prize. With humor, wit, and an insider’s insight, The Talent peels back the layers of women who are in the business of being perceived. And while they work to push their careers forward and maintain the public’s goodwill, all five are forced to confront truths about themselves that they would rather ignore.

Lottie just knows that her boyfriend is going to propose during lunch at one of London’s fanciest restaurants. But when his big question involves a trip abroad, not a trip down the aisle, she’s completely crushed. So when Ben, an old flame, calls her out of the blue and reminds Lottie of their pact to get married if they were both still single at 30, she jumps at the chance. No formal dates - just a quick march to the altar and a honeymoon on Ikonos, the sun-drenched Greek island where they first met years ago. Their family and friends are horrified. Fliss, Lottie’s older sister, knows that Lottie can be impulsive - but surely this is her worst decision yet.

Callahan Garrity is the owner of House Mouse, a cleaning service that tidies up after Atlanta’s elite. She’s also a former cop and a part-time sleuth. She and her coterie of devoted helpers can ransack a house for clues faster than it takes a fingerprint to set. When Callahan Garrity gets caught in a liquor store holdup on the way home from a St. Paddy’s Day party, one of her best friends is shot.

Deputy sheriff Constance Kopp is outraged to see young women brought into the Hackensack jail over dubious charges of waywardness, incorrigibility, and moral depravity. The strong-willed, patriotic Edna Heustis, who left home to work in a munitions factory, certainly doesn't belong behind bars. And 16-year-old runaway Minnie Davis, with few prospects and fewer friends, shouldn't be publicly shamed and packed off to a state-run reformatory. But such were the laws - and morals - of 1916.

It’s the summer of 2015, and Alice Quick needs to get to work. She’s twenty-eight years old, grieving her mother, barely scraping by as a nanny, and freshly kicked out of her apartment. If she can just get her act together and sign up for the MCAT, she can start chasing her dream of becoming a doctor...but in the Age of Distraction, the distractions are so distracting. There’s her tech millionaire brother’s religious awakening. His picture-perfect wife’s emotional breakdown. Her chaotic new roommate’s thirst for adventure.

These aren’t easy times for the Yada Yadas: a devastating fire, an HIV diagnosis, loss of loved ones, and possible prison time loom over the sisters’ heads. More than once, they dissolve into tears and worry. But when so much seems to be going wrong, the sisters know where to turn . . . prayer. And as Jodi Baxter’s prayer life continues to be revolutionized by the Yada Yada Prayer Group, she begins to recognize God’s voice. It’s still, it’s small, and she often confuses it with her own feelings. But it’s there.

Freshly disengaged from her fiancé and feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, 30-year-old Ruth quits her job, leaves town, and arrives at her parents' home to find that situation more complicated than she'd realized. Her father, a prominent history professor, is losing his memory and is only erratically lucid. Ruth's mother, meanwhile, is lucidly erratic.