Imagine Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show with a lot more backbone and confidence," wrote Publishers Weekly about Miss Julia, Ann Ross's endearing Dixie doyenne of decorum. In her latest romp, Miss Julia-now Mrs. Sam Murdoch-returns from her whirlwind elopement, only to find herself roped into Hazel Marie's scheme to raise money by throwing a beauty pageant. Though it all seems a tad distasteful, it's nothing compared to the revelation that Pigeon...

"Artist Laura Matthews finds her new home in the Welsh mountains to be a place so charged with tales and legends that she is able to reach through the gossamer-fine veil that separates her own world from that of myth and fable"--

Mrs. Dalloway chronicles a June day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway-a day that is taken up with running minor errands in preparation for a party and that is punctuated, toward the end, by the death of a young man she has never met. In giving an apparently ordinary day such immense resonance and significance-infusing it with the elemental conflict between death and life-Virginia Woolf triumphantly discovers her distinctive style as a novelist. Originally...

"Isn't life more fun in the fast lane? When bored housewife and mother Camilla Stewart impulsively invites her old schoolfriends for dinner, she hardly imagines that the evening will shatter her comfortable existence. But Roz Vallender and Loulou Marks are no ordinary guests. Roz is a stunning and self-assured TV presenter, while the reckless Loulou owns Vampires, the trendiest wine bar in town. When they reveal that Camilla's husband Jack has been...

"All Beth has to do is drive her son to his soccer game, watch him play, and then return home. Just because she knows her ex-best friend lives near the field, that doesn't mean she has to drive past her house and try to catch a glimpse of her. Why would Beth do that and risk dredging up painful memories? She hasn't seen Flora for twelve years. She doesn't want to see her today--or ever again. But she can't resist. She parks outside the open gates...

Sixty-year-old Olivia's first marriage was long and unhappy, but now she is a newlywed, thrilled to finally be starting her life with the man she's always truly loved, even if they are getting a late start. Kathy is in her forties and married to a handsome, successful businessman. Theirs would be a fairy-tale romance if it weren't for one problem: he's passionately in love with someone else. Twenty-something Elise is also in a troubled marriage,...

"Dawn Edelstein is on a plane when she is told to prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong. Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, their beloved daughter, and her...

"Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home--a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse--but John's not here. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb. Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world's master storytellers"--...

Godmothers to one another's children, four women who married into a prosperous Italian family must come together, despite secrets and betrayals, when their husbands are forced to leave them during World War II, pitting them against notorious gangsters who run the streets of New York City.