Women Humor

The year is 2023, and things are bad—bad, but still not as bad as they could be. Hestia Harris is forty-two, abandoned by her husband (he left to fight for the Union cause), and estranged from her parents (they’re leaving for the Confederacy). Yes, the United States has collapsed into a second civil war and again it’s Unionists against Confederates, children against parents, friends against friends.

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Middlesteins comes a wickedly funny novel about a 39-year-old single, childfree woman who defies convention as she seeks connection. Who is Andrea Bern? When her therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she's a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But it's what she leaves unsaid - she's alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her flesh - that feels the most true.

Cassandra may have seen the future, but it doesn't mean she's resigned to telling the Trojans everything she knows. In this ebullient collection, virgins escape from being sacrificed, witches refuse to be burned, whores aren't ashamed, and every woman gets a chance to be a radioactive cockroach warrior who snaps back at catcallers.

It's been a long, rainy summer for Goldy Schulz, who is engaged in planning wedding receptions for what seems to be all of Aspen Meadow. It's bad enough that Billie Attenborough, the bride from hell, wants to move the location to the Gold Gulch Spa just a scant two days before tying the knot to her doctor fiance. Then Doc Finn, best friend of Goldy's godfather Jack, is killed when his car tumbles into a ravine. But Jack thinks Doc was murdered because of research he was doing at the spa....

"I'm Lexi Carmichael, geek extraordinaire. I spend my days stopping computer hackers at the National Security Agency. My nights? Those I spend avoiding my mother and eating cereal for dinner. Even though I work for a top-secret agency, I've never been in an exciting car chase, sipped a stirred (not shaken) martini, or shot a poison dart from an umbrella. Until today, that is, when two gun-toting thugs popped up in my life and my best friend disappeared."

When five-week-old Prudence, a brown tabby, meets a woman named Sarah in a deserted construction site on Manhattan's Lower East Side, she knows she's found the human she was meant to adopt. For three years their lives are filled with laughter, tuna, catnaps, music, and the unchanging routines Prudence craves. Then one day Sarah doesn't come home. From Prudence's perch on the windowsill she sees Laura, the daughter who hardly ever comes to visit Sarah, arrive with her new husband. They're carrying boxes.

An absolute delight of a debut novel by William Kuhn - author of Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books - Mrs Queen Takes the Train wittily imagines the kerfuffle that transpires when a bored Queen Elizabeth strolls out of the palace in search of a little fun, leaving behind a desperate team of courtiers who must find the missing Windsor before a national scandal erupts.

The People We Hate at the Wedding is the story of a less than perfect family. Donna, the clan’s mother, is now a widow living in the Chicago suburbs with a penchant for the occasional joint and more than one glass of wine with her best friend while watching House Hunters International. Alice is in her thirties, single, smart, beautiful, stuck in a dead-end job where she is mired in a rather predictable, though enjoyable, affair with her married boss. Her brother Paul lives in Philadelphia with his older, handsomer, tenured track professor boyfriend.

Sir Tode has finally died at the age of 93. Lady Tode wants to leave the country to spend her remaining years in Capri. Unfortunately, her three tiresome children are either unwilling, or unable (too mad, too lefty or too happy in Australia), to take on management of their large and important home, so the mantle passes to a distant relative and his glamorous wife. Not long after the new owners take over, Lady Tode is found dead in the mausoleum. Accident? Or is there more going on behind the scenes of Tode Hall than an outsider would ever guess?

Julia Dorning thought she would die a lonely spinster. That was until nine months ago, when her world was turned upside down. Now she's got a dream career as a bakery owner, and a relationship with handsome Jared Moody - a life she never thought possible. Just as she's starting to feel comfortable in her new life, Julia is invited to battle it out on national television making cupcakes. An amazing opportunity, if she can muster up the confidence to do it, that is. Then, out of the blue, Jared goes and throws a wrench in their relationship, causing Julia to have to make some decisions.

Forced to rent out or lose their beloved Bella Flora after the loss of their renovation-turned-reality-TV show Do Over, Maddie, Nikki, Avery, Kyra, and Bitsy move into cottages at the Sunshine Hotel and Beach Club believing the worst is over. Only to discover just how uncertain their futures really are. Luckily, when the going gets tough, the ladies of Ten Beach Road know that their friendship - tried and tested - can chase away the darkest clouds and let the sun shine in....

Widowed Samantha Arias hasn’t spoken to Holly Dunfee in forever. It’s for the best. Samantha prefers to avoid conflict. The blisteringly honest Holly craves it. What they still have in common puts them both back on speed dial: a mutual love for Katie, their best friend of twenty-five years, now hospitalized with cancer and needing one little errand from her old college roomies. It’s simple: travel cross-country together, steal her loathsome ex-husband’s VW camper, find Katie’s diabetic Great Pyrenees at a Utah pound, and drive him back home to Wisconsin.

Aerospace engineer Esther Abbott doesn't believe in love, but she's perfectly happy to hate her annoying screenwriter neighbor, Jonathan. Until she's forced to strike a devil's bargain with him: he distracts her best friend from a mouth-breather ex, and in return Esther will help him with the sci-fi script he's writing. Her patience is put to the test when it's time to fulfill her end of the deal. But the more time she spends with her nemesis, the more hate turns into attraction - and attraction into something much deeper.

Nora, the owner of a diner, is happy serving up apple cider donuts. But her life is soon shaken when she discovers she and her younger sister Kit stand to inherit the home and land of the town's beloved cake lady, Peggy Johnson. Kit, an aspiring - and broke - filmmaker thinks her problems are solved when she and Nora find out Peggy was in the process of selling the land to a big-box developer.

Vivian doesn't feel like she fits in - and never has. As a child, she was so whimsical that her parents told her she was "left by fairies". Now, she is living alone in Dublin, where the neighbors treat her like she's crazy, her older sister condescends to her, social workers seem to have registered her as troubled, and she hasn't a friend in the world. So, she decides it's time to change her life. She begins by advertising for a friend. Not just any friend. She wants one named Penelope.

Rose Wallace’s world revolves around all things Jane Austen, and with the annual festival in Bath - and the arrival of dishy archaeologist Dr. Aiden Trevellyan - just around the corner, all is well with the world. But then a mysterious woman who bears more than a passing resemblance to the great author moves in upstairs, and things take a disastrous turn. Rose’s new neighbour is none other than Jane Austen herself, now trapped in the 21st century after her time-travel adventure was sabotaged by a mischievous dog. Rose’s life is instantly changed.

Despite her innate ambition and summa cum laude smarts, Kate Pearson has turned into a major slacker. After being dumped by her handsome French "almost fiancé", she abandons her grad school plans and spends her days lolling on the couch, leaving her apartment only when a dog-walking gig demands it. Her friends don't know what to do other than pass tissues and hope for a comeback while her practical sister, Angela, pushes every remedy she can think of, from trapeze class to therapy to job interviews.

When Houston reporter Lucy Resnick cashes in her retirement to buy her grandmother's farm in Buttercup, Texas, she's looking forward to a simple life as a homesteader. But Lucy has barely finished putting up her first batch of Killer Dewberry Jam when an oil exploration truck rolls up to the farm and announces plans to replace her broccoli patch with an oil derrick.

Northelm Boarding School on Lake Placid has the worst bully of all - a demon by the name of Hatchet Jack. M.J. Holliday, along with her partners Gilley and the handsome Dr. Steven Sable, are ready to send him back to the portal from whence he came. The school's summer construction, an uncooperative dean, and the very tempting Dr. Delicious are all trying to distract M.J. from her ghost hunting.

A control freak looks for love (women who leave wet teaspoons in sugar bowls need not apply). ‘I haven’t woken up with a cup of tea by the bed for seven years. It seems such a small thing but it’s one of a thousand things I miss about having someone around to take care of me. I have spent my entire adult life getting things the way I want them and all I want now is someone to give it all up for.’ Jon Richardson. Is your filing faultless? Your CDs, apostrophes, cutlery all in the right places?