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

Here are the three most common lies women hear in Hollywood: "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." "I'd like to put you in my next movie." "I think I'm falling in love with you." If anyone has heard it all, it's Hannah. As the daughter of celebrated actor Leo Fairchild, she can easily recite the bald-faced lies you'll hear out of the mouth of almost any A-list leading man. When Leo has a fatal heart attack while making love to a nineteen-year-old starlet, Hannah's world goes out of orbit. Not only has Leo's conniving fourth wife frozen her trust fund, but the grieving widow has also been having an affair with Hannah's indie producer boyfriend! Faced with a credit card bill that rivals the national debt, Hannah is forced to put her one passion -- astronomy -- on hold while she takes the job of personal assistant to international hottie Louis Trollope. Louis is just as egotistical -- and yes, irresistible -- as her father had been. Which is why she's determined to keep him -- and his super-model girlfriend, bad boy entourage, and over-sexed agent -- at arm's length. Besides, she's falling in love with his best friend, screenwriter Mick Bradshaw. But Louis loves a challenge. And he's decided that convincing Hannah that he loves her is the role of a lifetime.

True Hollywood Lies

Brown, Josie

United States

Zoe Rose never quite fit in. As the only kid in kindergarten with an enormous red afro, Zoe was taunted by the other little girls for refusing to share her "Annie" wig, even when she swore it was her own hair (it was). In second grade, after seeing her best friend ridiculed for wearing a dirty, pink, polka-dot party dress to school every day, she became obsessed with understanding what makes normal girls tick and why they're so cruel to the girls who never seem to "get it." And so Zoe begins a lifelong study of girl behavior, and by thirty, finds herself editor of Issues magazine. Determined to raid the locker room of the female psyche and rip open the frilly façade of femininity once and for all, she sets out to reform an entire nation of women, beginning with the readers of the most notorious magazine on Madison Avenue. It's the feminist vs. the fashionistas. Can Zoe stop girls from behaving badly toward other girls, and turn them into a strong, united force that can succeed in our male-dominated world? Or will her spectacularly warped sense of humor, pathetic wardrobe, and plethora of psychosomatic illnesses get her eaten alive? Zoe's willing to risk losing it all, including her mind, but she'll walk away with something she never dreamed she wanted: the little girl hiding inside of her.

Miss Understanding

Lessing, Stephanie

With the holiday season drawing near, the ladies of Hope Springs, North Carolina, are making plans for a cake cookbook—a project that will hopefully lift the spirits of a beloved member of their close-knit quartet. But Margaret Peele is downhearted and uninspired now that her cancer has returned. All she wants this Christmas is to visit her mother's Texas hometown . . . and to see their absent friend, pastor Charlotte Stewart, who left Hope Springs to run a battered women's shelter. So impulsive Beatrice Newgarden Witherspoon commandeers a very inappropriate—but comfortable—van to transport Margaret, Louise Fisher, and Jessie Jenkins across the country for a Lone Star State reunion with Charlotte. And over the course of a remarkable journey they will rediscover the greatest Christmas gift of all: eternal friendship.

Christmas Cake (A Hope Springs Book)

Hinton, Lynne

Sarah is smart, sexy, talented, and funny ... and less than satisfied with her life. She has a career that she absolutely adores and true romance on the horizon. But there's something missing -- something that has her restlessly scanning the faces in the crowd and asking, Is she the one?
Sarah never met the birth mother who gave her up for adoption. And that hole in her past has colored everything that came after it. Now, with the big "three-five" looming, Sarah's setting off on a wild Manhattan odyssey in search of the woman who gave her life. 
But the sages say you should be very careful what you wish for. The mother she's been seeking may not turn out to be the one Sarah finds -- and she may just rock Sarah's world!

Disturbing the Peace: A Novel

Newman, Nancy

Genre Fiction

Successful Claudia Barrett seems to be doing all right. She's a vice president at her firm, with and engagement ring on her finger from the man who's lover her since high school. so what if she's been wearing it for five years--and her classic, expensive, dull everyday outfits make her look like someone fatally allergic to a good time? What exactly is wrong with the girl?She's bored, for one thing. She's thirty years old and in a rut--and best friend, Pam, thinks it's time Claudia got her freak on. It's time to inject a little action, adventure, and good old-fashioned lust into her sister's life. But practicing theat Pam is preaching and going buck wild could have some serious consequences, especially when tall, dark, and dangerous Cody is added to the mix.Things are about to get funky for Ms. Claudia Barrett...

Going Buck Wild Wild Is the Only Way to Play It

Romance

UNKNOWN

Contemporary

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