Life And Other Inconveniences

“A heart-wrenching page-turner told with warmth and humor.”—People Magazine (Pick of the Week) “A rich testament to the power of second chances.”—Women’s World A Publishers Weekly and USA Today Bestseller! From the New York Times bestselling author of Good Luck with That comes a new novel about a blue-blood grandmother and her black-sheep granddaughter who discover they are truly two sides of the same coin. Emma London never thought she had anything in common with her grandmother Genevieve London. The regal old woman came from wealthy and bluest-blood New England stock, but that didn't protect her from life's cruelest blows: the disappearance of Genevieve's young son, followed by the premature death of her husband. But Genevieve rose from those ashes of grief and built a fashion empire that was respected the world over, even when it meant neglecting her other son. When Emma's own mother died, her father abandoned her on his mother's doorstep. Genevieve took Emma in and reluctantly raised her--until Emma got pregnant her senior year of high school. Genevieve kicked her out with nothing but the clothes on her back...but Emma took with her the most important London possession: the strength not just to survive but to thrive. And indeed, Emma has built a wonderful life for herself and her teenage daughter, Riley. So what is Emma to do when Genevieve does the one thing Emma never expected of her and, after not speaking to her for nearly two decades, calls and asks for help?

Penny Lane is brutally murdered on her thirteith birthday. In her afterlife she is chosen to work deciding the fates of murderers but must learn to survive her new world when one of the murderers escapes.

Tenth edition guide for earning degrees through correspondence classes, night school, summer school, weekend school, exams and life experience. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Many are haunted and obsessed by their own eventual deaths, but perhaps no one as much as Sue William Silverman. This thematically linked collection of essays charts Silverman's attempt to confront her fears of that ultimate unknown. Her dread was fomented in part by a sexual assault, hidden for years, that led to an awareness that death and sex are in some ways inextricable, an everyday reality many women know too well. Through gallows humor, vivid realism, and fantastical speculation, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences explores this fear of death and the author's desire to survive it. From cruising New Jersey's industry-blighted landscape in a gold Plymouth to visiting the emergency room for maladies both real and imagined to suffering the stifling strictness of an intractable piano teacher, Silverman guards her memories for the same reason she resurrects archaic words--to use as talismans to ward off the inevitable. Ultimately, Silverman knows there is no way to survive death physically. Still, through language, commemoration, and metaphor, she searches for a sliver of transcendent immortality.

A sharp, funny, and heartfelt memoir of losing both parents to cancer and the daring choices Gila Pfeffer made to avoid the same early demise By the time she was thirty, Gila Pfeffer was the oldest living member of her family, having lost her mother to breast cancer and her father to colon cancer. A simple blood test confirmed she carried the BRCA1 gene—which put her at high risk of developing cancer herself. Determined to break the cycle of early death in her family, Gila decides to undergo an elective double mastectomy. This memoir follows her journey as she becomes a reluctant expert on how to sit shiva, grows up, falls in love, and enters motherhood, before her life is derailed yet again. Her double mastectomy reveals cancer already growing in one breast. After enduring eight rounds of chemo and the removal of her ovaries, she takes her last-ever dip in the mikvah waters as a bald, menopausal, thirty-five-year-old mother of four. With chutzpah honed over years of repeatedly surviving the worst, she manages to save her own life. Drenched in Gila’s dark humor, Nearly Departed is a story about thriving against the odds, committing to what’s important, and leaving a better legacy than the one you inherited.

Sometimes you have to break a family to fix it. From New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins, a new novel examining a family at the breaking point—in all its messy, difficult, wonderful complexity. The Frosts are a typical American family. Barb and John, married almost fifty years, are testy and bored with each other...who could blame them after all this time? At least they have their daughters-- Barb's favorite, the perfect, brilliant Juliet; and John's darling, the free-spirited Sadie. The girls themselves couldn't be more different, but at least they got along, more or less. It was fine. It was enough. Until the day John had a stroke, and their house of cards came tumbling down. Now Sadie has to put her career as a teacher and struggling artist in New York on hold to come back and care for her beloved dad--and face the love of her life, whose heart she broke, and who broke hers. Now Juliet has to wonder if people will notice that despite her perfect career as a successful architect, her perfect marriage to a charming Brit, and her two perfect daughters, she's spending an increasing amount of time in the closet having panic attacks. And now Barb and John will finally have to face what's been going on in their marriage all along. From the author of Good Luck with That and Life and Other Inconveniences comes a new novel of heartbreaking truths and hilarious honesty about what family really means.

National bestselling author Lesley Crewe's new novel explores widowhood, complicated family dynamics, and growing up at any age. Well, Dick's dead. Now what? Margo, his widow, is trying to dodge the tsunami of paperwork coming her way. She doesn't want to deal with the details -- why do you think she was married in the first place? Dick always handled the drudgery. Monty, Margo's ex-husband (the first one, not the dead one), is trying to support Margo -- who seems to be finally entering adulthood at the tender age of sixty-two. Their daughter Julia knows Margo needs her, but between work complications, house complications, and genius-yet-useless son complications, Julia's gasping for air already. Dead Dick's ex-wife Carole and their daughter Velma consider a Margo a maneater thanks to a few long-ago indiscretions, so the funeral is a nightmare. Life in New Brunswick lately is a tornado of siblings, children, pets, marriages, health issues, and endless bureaucracies. And at the centre of it all is Margo, living alone for the very first time, trying to endure everyone else's judgements about the woman she is when she doesn't even know herself. Maybe a cat will help. (The cat doesn't help.) How old do you have to be to come of age? ....and has anyone seen Dick's will? With humour and heart, national bestseller Lesley Crewe walks readers through the incredibly disruptive domino effects of the death of one unremarkable man.

Acetylene Torch Songs is a guidebook for writers who want their honesty, social engagement, and intimacy to reach beyond the page and transform the lives of readers with searing, indelible, and unquenchable words.