She wasn’t looking for love. As a successful writer with an established career, a comfortable home and a supportive group of friends, her life was full. But then, 30 years after he broke her heart the first time, he walked into a book signing and back into her life. Spurred on by the idyll of a first love made good, they reconnect through emails—the bits and bytes of their messages re-forming into a real electricity between them. He is smitten. She is enthralled. 
 But, strangely, love has left her with a nasty case of writer’s block. She gathers all the strength she can find in the text around her—using optimistic horoscopes, evasive fortune cookies and the inanely unhelpful suggestions of books on writer’s block—to fight against the understanding that a love can’t be sustained on language alone. Then, in a surprising and wickedly delicious resolution, she recognizes that truth and fiction can be one and the same in matters of the heart, and that in a “he said, she said” story, the writer always gets the last word. 
 At A Loss For Words is another brilliant expression of Diane Schoemperlen’s gift for building the minutiae of everyday life into a profound understanding of women, men, love and imagination.

At A Loss For Words

Literature & Fiction

SCHOEMPERLEN, Diane

Humor & Satire

Phyllis Bruce Books

In a story about deception, exploitation, and the choices modern women are forced to make, a successful fashion designer deals with a company takeover, her inability to have children, an unfaithful husband, and a secret search for her birth mother. 150,000 first printing. $175,000 ad/promo. Tour.

FASHIONABLY LATE

Humor & Entertainment

GOLDSMITH

Humor

Harpercollins

BESTSELLER

GOLDSMITH, Olivia

Sue Welfare's first novel of modern manners, now available in A format and in highly successful series style There are two ways to make sex pay. One is illegal and the other can land you in a whole lot of trouble. When writer Dora Hall's erotic novels become successful, her agent decides to cash in with a promotional tour. Unfortunately Dora's career is her best-kept secret, and so she is delighted when he hires a glamorous stand-in. Predatory blonde Lillian Bliss fulfils everyone's criteria; she's a walking sexual adventure, lapping up media attention and making it all look wonderfully simple - until she starts to deviate from Dora's carefully written script. Chaos descends upon the small Norfolk town, local celebrities and politicians scrabble frantically to hide their seedy pasts and Dora's cover is completely blown. What began with a few little lies turns into a spectacular slice of mayhem in this wickedly witty and warm debut from a tremendously talented writer.

A Few Little Lies

Welfare, Sue.

A warm, witty and wise novel about love, friendship and being in your thirties.Gloria, Eimear and Kate have been friends since they were a trio of six-year-olds cast as the Three Wise Men in the nativity play.Twenty-five years on, they’ve left Omagh for Dublin and grown up to be Three Unwise Women, all too prone to misuse the gifts they’ve been given. Eimear’s beauty captivates men but robs her of independence. Kate’s dazzling wit blinds her to the consequences of betraying a friend. And Gloria’s urge to nurture, thwarted by infertility, threatens to destroy everything she holds dear.Aided and abetted in their misdeeds by the irresistible Jack, philandering poet and seducer extraordinaire, the troika find themselves putting their friendship to a test from which it may never recover.To this black comedy Martina Devlin brings a delightful lightness of touch, a turn of phrase to treasure, and three characters to take to your heart.

Three Wise Men

Devlin, Martina

From the author of GUILTY CREATURES comes a novel of family life turned upside down
Kate’s got her life sorted out, with her own business, run from her trendy townhouse in London, where she’s lucky enough to have best friends in the same street, a workable marriage, two kids, the occasional visit home to her roots. But all this is changed by a phone call one night: her widowed mother has fallen over and is in hospital.
Things aren’t as they seem. Far from being a fragile old lady in desperate need, it transpires that Kate’s mother has tripped down the stairs after too many lunchtime cocktails and is being only too well looked after by her gorgeous toyboy lodger. Miffed, Kate returns to London – to discover that her best friend has been sleeping with her husband. Where does that leave her?
A novel of trust betrayed and lives rebuilt, internet dating and the strange comfort of returning home after life in the fast lane, this will win Sue Welfare even more dedicated fans.

Fallen Women

A funny, sad, truthful novel about men, women and all that jazz Matthew Moore is madly in love. He's one of the lucky ones: after thirteen years, he still idolises Anna, his wife. What's more, his first novel is about to be published. Life could not be better. So why can't he just enjoy it? 'Here's the thing: Anna has changed. It's nothing big. She hasn't grown horns. But there's a little green dot flashing angrily on my screen, telling me there's something out there!' Neither his beloved Duke Ellington records nor his saxophone can distract Matthew from the relentless nudge of his obsession. And so he begins to spy on his wife, until a chance discovery sends his worries spiralling out of control. As he pursues Anna from the streets of Camden to the boulevards of Paris, Matthew is caught in a vortex of jealousy which culminates in an unforgettable climax beneath the family Christmas tree. Hilarious and devastating, Love You Madly is about having everything you ever wanted -- and having everything to lose.

Love You Madly

George, Alex

Genre Fiction

The year is 1954 and Daniel Dorsey learns at the age of eight the intimate meaning of death when his parents are killed in a car crash. Taken in by his colorful, at times mad, and always tender and caring extended family, Daniel learns that even the deepest sorrows and hurt can be healed.  Michael Raleigh's In the Castle of the Flynns is about a young boy growing up Irish in a vibrant 1950s Chicago neighborhood. Now grown and looking back on those years, Daniel recalls his bouts with grief and fear of abandonment as he learns to adjust to his new surroundings amidst his oddball family. It is a time of wakes and weddings, conflicts and romance.   Above all, it is a time when Daniel comes to understand both his own loss and the dark places in the lives of his loved ones.  In the Castle of the Flynns is a poignant, often hilarious story of hope, passions and unforgettable memories.

In the Castle of the Flynns

Raleigh, Michael

Literary

Joel Lingeman has been set adrift. Until recently, life was 'relative contentedness'; working for Congress, frequenting the Hill club a little too frequently, cooking dinner for two every night and routine sex on Sundays. Now Sam, his lover of fifteen years, has left him for a stunning twenty-three year old and he cannot score a trick in the sleaziest pick-up joint in town. Joel's revulsion for the politics around him has dissipated into mild amusement at the 'social Darwinists' ready to snatch the last cents from the hands of the old and ailing. And he is increasingly obsessed by the different lives he could have led. When a teenage fantasy reasserts itself, the blond haired demi-god his eye once fell upon modelling swimsuits in the back of an old magazine, Joel is overcome by a pervasive sense of loss and embarks on a quest to hunt down 'the Santa Fe boy'. Astutely observed and resonant with dark, sardonic undertones, Man About Town is an unforgettable novel about losing your way, your self-esteem and your security.

Man About Town

Merlis, Mark

United States

Harper

A congressional adviser and habituÉ of a cozy circuit of bars inside the Beltway, Joel Lingeman never quite felt middle-aged. At least not until he was abandoned by his partner of fifteen years and suddenly thrust into a dating scene with men half his age and no discernible trace of love handles. But this unexpected hole in his life inspires Joel's search for a 1964 edition ofan Esquire-like magazine that contained a swimsuit ad that obsessed and haunted him throughout his youth. Determined to find out what happened to the model shown in the ad, Joel slowly begins to understand what has happened to his own life. Sexy, smart, and deftly observed, Man About Town is a new twist on the idea that the personal is political and a must read for anyone who's ever wondered what happened to that first crush.

Man About Town: A Novel

Harper-perennial

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