A touching and hopeful look at the underworld of the office temp from hilarious author Leslie Carroll.
Meet Alice Finnegan: 30-something, single, and stuck in a cycle of horrific secretarial temp jobs. She's trying to fulfil her childhood ambitions of on-stage stardom while sharing an apartment with her 90-something grandmother, a feisty, funny, former Ziegfeld showgirl.
Along the rocky road to independence Alice encounters a colourful cast of oddballs, nuts, and control freaks (including members of her immediate family). And just to keep life interesting, she succumbs to the pitfalls of office romances and the perils of nasty bosses as she endeavours to keep her sanity intact and make that big break into the spotlights.

Temporary Insanity

Literature & Fiction

Carroll, Leslie

Humor & Satire

Avon Trade

With her sharp wit and riveting style, Leslie Carroll plunges us deep into the world of the overscheduled children of New York, and the oversexed, over-lipoed, overpaid people who raise them -or pay their nannies!
What happens when a trophy wife gets turned in for someone even younger, blonder, and prettier? Claire Marsh doesn't take it lying down. She may have lost both husband and housekeeper in the horrible divorce, but even if she's not able to keep living in the manner to which she's accustomed, she'll do what it takes so that her daughter will—with a little help from her slightly wild, slightly out-of-control sister MiMi.

Play Dates

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

Question: What do Amy, the new mom; Meriel, the West-Indian housekeeper; Claude and Naomi, the alternative couple; Faith, the elegant widow; and Talia, the super-skinny ballerina have in common?
Answer: Abso-freakin'-lutely-nothing!
Except that they all live lives of not-so-quiet desperation on the Upper West Side of New York City. What gets them through? Their unusual therapy sessions with supershrink Susan Lederer, held in the depths of the laundry room. Susan knows that all of life's problems eventually come out in the wash, but while the washers keep breaking down, she helps her female friends take control.
But Susan's life has become an agitated mess. Her teenage daughter seems destined for a fast-food future; her son's adolescence hasn't quite hit yet . . . and her perfect husband is hiding something. Susan could use a really good shrink.
Instead, her dirty linen exposed, she finds that it's her friends who rally 'round her, and by the final spin, she realizes that while it might not take a whole village, it does sometimes take a laundry room to get rid of the nastier wrinkles in life.
Now if only she could find the formula for getting rid of that ring around the collar.

Spin Doctor

AVON.

Forty is fabulous for Tessa Craig. Heck, she has it all—a glamorous job as a political speechwriter, a Manhattan duplex, and a handsome boyfriend, Congressman David Weyburn, whose integrity, charisma, and good looks have made him his party's rising star. But her fabulosity fizzles when scandal strikes, and Tessa watches helplessly as her seemingly happy love life and successful career collapse like a house of cards.
Tessa realizes it's time to embark on a new journey, one she should have made a long time ago. It's a trip that takes her to the Emerald Isle and back, leading her heart in unimagined directions. She makes new friends, unexpectedly adopts a new family (or do they adopt her?), and discovers unanticipated love with silver-tongued, green-eyed, aspiring pub owner, Jamie Doyle. And, most importantly, Tessa makes that uphill climb over the rainbow to find the ultimate pot of gold: Herself.

Herself

United States

William Morrow Paperbacks

When life throws you a curve ball...
Venus deMarley has just been hit with a wild pitch. At forty she's finally found the perfect fiancé, when Sophie—the daughter she gave up for adoption twenty years ago—suddenly reappears. Venus has another crisis on her hands as well: her eccentric millionaire dad just died and willed her his pet project—a rag-tag minor league baseball team called the Bronx Cheers—if Venus and Sophie can reconcile and once again become a family. Venus knows diddly about sports, but Sophie's a jock, unlike her glamorous mom. And after two decades apart, these two women know nothing about each other, and rarely agree on anything. But maybe—just maybe—they have more in common than they think...

Choosing Sophie

A behind-the-scenes look into the life of Meghan Markle and her romance with Prince Harry—a dishy, delightful must-read filled with exclusive insights for anyone obsessed with the Royal Family.
Leslie Carroll’s books on royalty are “an irresistible combination of People Magazine and the History Channel.”—Chicago Tribune
When Prince Harry of Wales took his American girlfriend, Meghan Markle, to have tea with his grandmother the queen, avid royal watchers had a hunch that a royal wedding was not far off. That prediction came true on November 27, 2017, when the gorgeous, glamorous twosome announced their engagement to the world. As they prepare to tie the knot in a stunning ceremony on May 19, 2018, that will be unprecedented in royal history, people are clamoring to know more about the beautiful American who captured Prince Harry’s heart. 
Born and raised in Los Angeles to a white father of German, English, and Irish descent and an African American mother whose ancestors had been enslaved on a Georgia plantation, Meghan has proudly embraced her biracial heritage. In addition to being a star of the popular television series Suits, she is devoted to her humanitarian work—a passion she shares with Harry. Though Meghan was married once before, Prince Harry is a modern royal, and the Windsors have welcomed her into the tight-knit clan they call “The Firm.” Even a generation ago, it would have been unthinkable, as well as impermissible, for any member of Great Britain’s royal family to consider marrying someone like Meghan. Professional actresses were considered scandalous and barely respectable. And the last time an American divorcee married into the Royal Family, it provoked a constitutional crisis!
In American Princess, Leslie Carroll provides context to Harry and Meghan’s romance by leading readers through centuries of Britain’s rule-breaking royal marriages, as well as the love matches that were never permitted to make it to the altar; followed by a never-before-seen glimpse into the little-known life of the woman bringing the Royal Family into the 21st century; and her dazzling, thoroughly modern romance with Prince Harry.

American Princess: The Love Story of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry

Humor & Entertainment

A funny, raucous, and delightfully dirty history of 1,000 years of bedroom-hopping secrets and scandals of Britain?s royals. Insatiable kings, lecherous queens, kissing cousins, and wanton consorts?history has never been so much fun. Royal unions have always been the stuff of scintillating gossip, from the passionate Plantagenets to Henry VIII?s alarming head count of wives and mistresses, to the Sapphic crushes of Mary and Anne Stuart right on up through the scandal-blighted coupling of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Thrown into loveless, arranged marriages for political and economic gain, many royals were driven to indulge their pleasures outside the marital bed, engaging in delicious flirtations, lurid love letters, and rampant sex with voluptuous and willing partners. This nearly pathological lust made for some of the most titillating scandals in Great Britain?s history. Hardly harmless, these affairs have disrupted dynastic alliances, endangered lives, and most of all, fed the salacious curiosity of the public for centuries. Royal Affairs will satiate that curiosity by bringing this arousing history alive.

Royal Affairs: A Lusty Romp Through the Extramarital Adventures That Rocked the British Monarchy

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

BERKLEY

From the author of American Princess: The Love Story of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry comes a funny and delightful history of the royal weddings and marriages of Europe’s most famous—and infamous—monarchs. “An irresistible combination of People magazine and the History Channel.”—Chicago Tribune Since time immemorial, royal marriages have had little to do with love—and almost everything to do with diplomacy and dynasty. Clashing personalities have joined in unholy matrimony to form such infamous couples as Russia’s Peter II and Catherine the Great, and France's Henri II and Catherine de Medici—all with the purpose of begetting a male heir. But with tensions high and silverware flying, kings like England’s Henry II have fled to the beds of their nubile mistresses, while queens such as Eleanor of Aquitaine have plotted their revenge... Full of the juicy gossip and bad behavior that characterized Royal Affairs, this book chronicles the love-hate marriages of the crowned heads of Europe—from the Angevins to Charles and Di—and ponders how dynasties ever survived at all.

Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey Through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny,and Desire

Penguin Publishing Group

The author of Notorious Royal Marriages presents some of history's boldest, baddest, and bawdiest royals. The bad seeds on the family trees of the most powerful royal houses of Europe often became the most rotten of apples: über-violent autocrats Vlad the Impaler and Ivan the Terrible literally reigned in blood. Lettice Knollys strove to mimic the appearance of her cousin Elizabeth I and even stole her man. And Pauline Bonaparte scandalized her brother Napoleon by having a golden goblet fashioned in the shape of her breast. Chock-full of shocking scenes, titillating tales, and wildly wicked nobles, Royal Pains is a rollicking compendium of the most infamous, capricious, and insatiable bluebloods of Europe.

Royal Pains: A Rogues' Gallery of Brats, Brutes, and Bad Seeds

More breathtaking than any fairy tale, here are seven scandalous, seductive centuries of all-for-love royal desire . . . Elegant palaces, dazzling power plays, shimmering jewels, and the grandest of all-or-nothing gambles—nothing can top real-life love among the royalty. Louis XIV defied God and law, permitting his married mistress Madame de Montespan to usurp the role of Queen of France, then secretly wed her successor, Madame de Maintenon. Grigory Potemkin was a worthy equal in Catherine the Great’s bed as well as in Russia’s political arena. Dashing Count Axel von Fersen risked everything to save Marie Antoinette’s life more than once—and may have returned her passion. The unshakable devotion of the beloved late “Queen Mum” helped King George VI triumph over his, and England’s, darkest hours. And the unpretentious, timelessly glamorous—even relatable—union of Prince William and the former Kate Middleton continues to enthrall the world. Full of marvelous tales, unforgettable scandals, and bedazzled nobles who refused to rule their hearts, this delightfully insightful book is what the sweetest royal dreams are made of...

Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe

Parenting & Relationships

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