If I Could Turn Back Time, by Beth Harbison. Everyone has thought, at one time or another, "If only I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, I'd do things so differently."
Thirty-seven year old Ramie Phillips has led a very successful life. She made her fortune and now she hob nobs with the very rich and occasionally the semi-famous, and she enjoys luxuries she only dreamed of as a middle-class kid growing up in Potomac, Maryland. But despite it all, she can't ignore the fact that she isn't necessarily happy. In fact, lately Ramie has begun to feel more than a little empty.
On a boat with friends off the Florida coast, she tries to fight her feelings of discontent with steel will and hard liquor. No one even notices as she gets up and goes to the diving board and dives off...
Ramie finds herself back on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, with a second chance to see the people she's lost and change the choices she regrets. How did she get back here? Has she gone off the deep end? Is she really back in time? Above all, she'll have to answer the question that no one else can: What it is that she really wants from the past, and for her future?
Royal Wedding, by Meg Cabot. A generation has grown up with Cabot's Princess Diaries series, and now she has brought the series up to date with its first adult installment.
For Princess Mia, the past five years since college graduation have been a whirlwind of activity, what with living in New York City, running her new teen community center, being madly in love, and attending royal engagements. And speaking of engagements. Mia’s gorgeous longtime boyfriend Michael managed to clear both their schedules just long enough for an exotic (and very private) Caribbean island interlude where he popped the question! Of course Mia didn’t need to consult her diary to know that her answer was a royal oui.
But now Mia has a scandal of majestic proportions to contend with: Her grandmother’s leaked “fake” wedding plans to the press that could cause even normally calm Michael to become a runaway groom. Worse, a scheming politico is trying to force Mia’s father from the throne, all because of a royal secret that could leave Genovia without a monarch. Can Mia prove to everyone—especially herself—that she’s not only ready to wed, but ready to rule as well?
A Paris Affair, by Tatiana de Rosnay. De Rosnay, best known for her international bestseller Sarah's Key, returns here with a collection of short fiction, each a perfect length to while away a sultry summer afternoon. Does a fruit taste its sweetest when it is forbidden? Is that which is
prohibited always the most pleasurable? In this passionate and
perceptive collection, Tatiana de Rosnay paints a portrait of the most
forbidden of loves, in many different shades--sometimes tragic,
sometimes humorous, sometimes heartfelt, always with a dry wit and an
unflinching authenticity.
The Woman Who Stole My Life, by Marian Keyes. In her own words, Stella Sweeney is just “an ordinary woman living an
ordinary life with her husband and two teenage kids,” working for her
sister in their neighborhood beauty salon. Until one day she is struck
by a serious illness, landing her in the hospital for months After
recovering, Stella finds out that her neurologist, Dr. Mannix Taylor,
has compiled and self-published a memoir about her illness. Her
discovery comes when she spots a photo of the finished copy in an
American tabloid—and it’s in the hands of the vice president’s wife! As
her relationship with Dr. Taylor gets more complicated, Stella struggles
to figure out who she was before her illness, who she is now, and who
she wants to be while relocating to New York City to pursue a career as a
newly minted self-help memoirist. Keyes is one of the most reliably amazing authors in her genre, and this is a very obvious choice for folks looking for some engrossing, but easy, summer reading.
How to be a Grown Up, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus. Readers may remember this dynamic duo as the authors behind best-sellers like The Nanny Diaries and Citizen Girl. They've returned with a timely novel about a forty-something wife and mother thrust back into the workforce, where she finds herself at the mercy of a boss half her age. Rory McGovern is entering the ostensible prime of her life when her
husband, Blake, loses his dream job and announces he feels like “taking a
break” from being a husband and father. Rory was already spread thin
and now, without warning, she is single-parenting two kids, juggling
their science projects, flu season, and pajama days, while coming to
terms with her disintegrating marriage. And without Blake, her only hope
is to accept a full-time position working for two full-time
twenty-somethings. Can Rory learn to decipher her bosses’ lingo, texts that read like
license plates, and arbitrary mandates? And is there any hope of saving
her marriage? With her family hanging by a thread, Rory must adapt to
this hyper-digitized, over-glamorized, narcissistic world of
millennials…whatever it takes.
Have a great weekend, readers! I'm back next week with my picks for some extraordinary fiction just off the beaten path that I'm looking forward to next month.
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