Unhappily Ever After

Sometimes life doesn't go the way we plan. And for Bailey, that was nothing but the truth. At one point, she thought she had it all. A loving husband, beautiful kids, the house, and cars. But somewhere along the way, it was no longer enough. Bailey finds herself looking for love, well, sex, in all the wrong places, and she has no idea just how much one bad decision is about to change her life forever. Sex isn't better than love. But for some, sex is more important than marriage. And by the time Bailey realizes that she wants her marriage to work, her life is spiraling out of control and there's nothing she can do to stop it. Except give in. Should she sleep with the enemy again? Bailey and her friends are all faced with problems that they just can't seem to beat. Find out why Bailey regrets the very day that she decided to cheat.

Unhappily Ever After employs three different narrative techniques to tell the story of Rachel Rothschild, her family and friends, the wealthy young man who will become her husband and their children. Seeking to establish her own identity, other than as her rich husband's consort, Rachel works hard at becoming an investigative journalist, and she is succeeding.. But then she experiences a trauma that threatens to destroy her sanity and marriage. Trying to recover her balance, Rachel, who had always been a star student, enters graduate school in large part as a retreat from life and emotions she cannot control. The story is told in four chapters or books. The first book is an autobiography, begun when Rachel is expecting her first child. It starts with Rachel's tomboy childhood in Santa Monica, California, moves on to the development of a tight circle of girlfriends in junior high and high school and the angst and the sexual experimentation of teen-dom. As in real life, the first book surrounds Rachel not just with her girlfriends but with parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, each of whose stories is an element in Rachel's own story. After entering the University of Colorado to room with her cousin, Yalie Goodman, Rachel is expelled following a drunk driving accident. She undergoes several months of difficult community service back in the Los Angeles area. Then she reenters college as a beginning freshman at UCLA and the following year is permitted by her parents to transfer to the University of California at Berkeley. There she pursues her goal of becoming a journalist and meets the young man, JJ Weiner, whom she will marry. But the marriage will not take place until JJ completes his law degree and obtains an MBA. Meanwhile, he insists that Rachel complete her senior year at Berkeley, return to her hometown and begin her career. He also refuses to have sex with her until they are married, adding up to more than two years of frustration and bafflement for Rachel. Unwillingly, Rachel accepts JJ's edict because she is not strong enough to stand up to him. It is not until after they are engaged that Rachel realizes that JJ comes from an extremely wealthy family and that their life together in Colorado will be luxurious, but also restrictive. Although she intends to keep her name, her identity will depend on him, not on her own achievements. Following the birth relatively early in the marriage of their first child, Rachel, at her husband's suggestion, goes to work at a local magazine and soon carves out a place for herself, building a reputation for tackling challenging issues. However, a miscarriage and the difficult birth of her second child mire Rachel in post-partum depression. She is just beginning to regain her footing when she experiences the trauma that forever changes her life. The trauma is described in the present tense in the second book. That is, it is taking place in real time while it's being read. The third and fourth books are told in the familiar third person past tense. The two books cover Rachel's efforts to overcome the emotional consequences of her experience, partly with professional help but also with the support of a cousin, Dev Goodman, who lives nearby in Denver, and Jessica Sherman, a rock-solid girlfriend back home in Santa Monica, California. As her young relatives begin to experience professional success, Rachel feels left behind, a damaged person who has retreated to academia to avoid real life in which she considers herself a failure as a mother and wife. Over a period of almost four years, ever reliant on her cousin and girlfriend, Rachel begins to understand the underlying source of her discontent, which has roots extending beyond her trauma. Unexpected developments accumulate and eventually explode into a crisis leading to a startling denouement. This is an ambitious novel with a large cast of characters, each of whose lives is intertwined with

Unhappily Ever After is a collection of short horror stories that will leave the reader not only with chills but the question of whether a happy ending is even deserved. Sometimes the most eery tales are those that leave you with the unexplained, and that is what many of these stories will leave you with. This collection takes those traditional monsters like ghosts, vampires, zombies, and werewolves and places them into the modern-day world where they can sometimes be unstoppable.

Where does a moderately popular internet star who never leaves her house look for potential suitors? Online. Tinder, Bumble, Match.com, OkCupid—I tried them all. My thirty-one-year-old self clicked and swiped her little heart out, leading to more dates than I could count, and more disappointment than I was prepared for. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you know all too well the perils of modern dating. But let’s say, eventually, you meet someone. You think to yourself, “Wow, they’re perfect! Take me off the market, put a ring on it, knock me up, the whole enchilada, because they are ‘the one.’” Let’s also say that they “feel the same way” about you. Your life starts to make sense! All the pain, heartbreak, and frustration from past failed relationships was worth it. Slow clap. That’s how I felt about Milos. He was from Europe, a doctor, wealthy, athletic. He had an accent and a dog. Milos was textbook marriage material. For him it was “love at first sight,” but for me, it was “anxiety on every date.” Something was telling me to run—but for two years, the only running I did was straight into his arms. If only I would have listened. This isn’t a love story. It’s my story of survival.

In How To Be Perfectly Unhappy, Inman explores the surprising benefits of forgetting about “happiness,” and embracing instead the meaningful activities that keep us busy and interested and fascinated.

In this highly acclaimed novel by the author of The Emperor’s Children, life isn’t all Emmy and Virginia Simpson might have hoped. When Emmy’s marriage to an Australian man ends, she flees her home in Sydney for the tropical paradise of Bali to “find herself”—only to become embroiled with an eclectic crew of international misfits and smugglers. Her sister Virginia, meanwhile, has never wandered far outside of London. Prim and pious, Virginia is struggling to find meaning in her life and her aging mother thinks a visit to the Isle of Skye is just what she needs. On these two islands halfway around the world, the middle-aged sisters confront their lives and their destinies with unexpected consequences. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Claire Messud's The Woman Upstairs.

If you're fat and fail every diet, if you're thin but can't get thin enough, if you lose your job, if your child dies, if you are diagnosed with cancer, if you always end up with exactly the wrong kind of person, if you always end up alone, if you can't get over the past, if your parents are insane and ruining your life, if you really and truly wish you were dead, if you feel like it's your destiny to be a star, if you believe life has a grudge against you, if you don't want to have sex with your spouse and don't know why, if you feel so ashamed, if you're lost in life. If you have ever wondered, How am I aupposed to survive this? This is How.