Women Humor

Twenty-four-year-old Megan may have her whole life ahead of her, but it already feels like a dead end, thanks to her dreadful job as a gastroenterologist's receptionist and her heart-clogging resentment of the success and happiness of everyone around her. But no one stokes Megan's bitterness quite like her coworker, Jillian, a grotesquely optimistic, 35-year-old single mother whose chirpy positivity obscures her mounting struggles.

Grace has what one might call a 'full and interesting life', which is code for not married and has no kids. Her life is the envy of her straight friends, but all this time she has been waiting in secret for love to hit her so hard that she would run out of breath, like the way a wave in a rough sea bowls you over, slams you into the sand and nearly drowns you.

Bergdorf Blondes are a thing, you know, a New York craze. Absolutely everyone wants to be one, but it’s très difficult. Honestly, it requires a level of commitment comparable to, say, learning Hebrew or quitting cigarettes. But first, a little bit about moi. The gossips call me a champagne bubble of a girl. I’m fluent in French, intermittently. I gave up England for Princeton to my mother’s horror. By day, I write articles for a fashion magazine. By night, I’m on the prowl for the ultimate accessory a Bergdorf Blonde must have: an impossibly rich man with a very large diamond ring.

It was a day like any other day for Marina Trahan…until she caught her husband in bed with another woman. Before that eye-opening wake-up call, Marina would have described her life as average or uneventful, maybe even boring. But now, chaos and confusion reign supreme.

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.

Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome, but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan's old girlfriends everywhere—at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away. While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world's most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely.

An alpha among the wolves of Wall Street, Kennedy Dawson rose to the top of the pack by striking the right contracts at the right times. But there's one deal that's been giving him a run for his money - a pact to never again let his assistant, Kate, get under his skin. She may be smart, gorgeous, and sharp as a whip, but she's definitely off-limits.

Grandir, pardonner et... manger des pâtes ! "J'ai peur du chiffre quatre. C'est une superstition très répandue en Asie. Le rêve ! Enfin des gens qui me comprennent ! Je devrais peut-être déménager... Vous avez beaucoup d'autres phobies ? Vous avez combien d'années devant vous ?" Anna a peur - de la foule, du bruit, de rouler sur l'autoroute, de la maladie, ou encore des pommes de terre qui ont germé... Elle est aussi enceinte de son deuxième enfant. Pour affronter cette nouvelle grossesse, elle décide d'aller voir une psy.

After losing her job and learning she might also lose her house because of a bad investment, Jess, a fiercely independent and hilariously wry BC grandma, resorts to growing pot in her basement to make ends meet. She then has to juggle her public life as a grandmother and member of the town’s senior women’s group - The Company of Crones - with her secret life as a pot grower.

In its heyday, The Golden Hotel was the crown jewel of the hotter-than-hot Catskills vacation scene. For more than sixty years, the Goldman and Weingold families - best friends and business partners - have presided over this glamorous resort which served as a second home for well-heeled guests and celebrities. But the Catskills are not what they used to be - and neither is the relationship between the Goldmans and the Weingolds.

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.”

In her best-selling memoirs, Ruth Reichl has long illuminated the theme of how food defines us, and never more so than in her dazzling fiction debut about sisters, family ties, and a young woman who must finally let go of guilt and grief to embrace her own true gifts.

Meet Tannie Maria - recipe writer turned crime fighter - and before she has time to take her Venus Chocolate Cake out of the oven, our glorious heroine finds herself embroiled in another mystery. In this wonderful sequel to Recipes for Love and Murder, Slimkat the bushman finds his life under threat and Tannie Maria is determined to find out who wants to kill him. But her new boyfriend, Detective Lieutenant Henk Kannemeyer, is keen to keep Tannie out of danger.

Meg Langslow was actually looking forward to renovating the old Victorian mansion she and her boyfriend Michael bought. But she wasn't thrilled by the lifetime of junk accumulated by the house's eccentric previous owner, Edwina Sprocket. The easiest solution: hold the end-all and be-all of gigantic yard sales.

Stuck with Alan's ghost following her around, Bree is in hot water now with no easy way out as she's been framed for his murder and plunked in the local pokey. If that weren't bad enough, Gran's ghost has been kidnapped, and all clues point to the Big Easy - New Orleans. With the police on her never-mind-the-size butt, two men vying for her attentions, and a mystery wrapped around the murder of her Gran and ex, she has more than enough to keep her stressed and turning prematurely gray.

Rescued by Calvin McLoughlin from a would-be subway attacker, Holland Bakker pays the brilliant musician back by pulling some of her errand-girl strings and getting him an audition with a big-time musical director. When the tryout goes better than even Holland could have imagined, Calvin is set for a great entry into Broadway - until he admits his student visa has expired and he's in the country illegally. Holland impulsively offers to wed the Irishman to keep him in New York, her growing infatuation a secret only to him.

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.

Meg Langslow's eccentric parents have a new hobby: growing roses and entering them in highly competitive shows. Dad's gardening skill and Mother's gift for selecting and arranging the blossoms should make them an unbeatable team - and Meg is relieved they've taken up such a safe, gentle hobby. She even volunteers to help when the Caerphilly Garden Club sponsors its first annual rose show. But after a few hours of dealing with her parents' competitors, Meg sees trouble....

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.

L.A. Woman is quintessential Babitz, the story of Sophie, a 20-something blonde Jim Morrison groupie gliding through a golden existence in L.A.; and Lola, a German immigrant who settles in Hollywood in the '20s to drive Pierce Arrows recklessly down Sunset Boulevard and who knows that Maybelline mascara cakes and that Rudolph Valentino is the essence of life. Sophie and Lola, like the many other women who move in and out of this electric saga, know that while L.A. is constantly changing, it is essentially eternal.