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Window on the bay : a novel / by Macomber, Debbie,author.;
When a single mom becomes an "empty nester," she spreads her wings to rediscover herself--and her passions--in this heartwarming novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber. Jenna Boltz's life is at a crossroads. After a messy divorce nearly twenty years ago, she raised her two children on her own, juggling motherhood with her beloved job as a Seattle intensive care nurse. Now that Paul and Allie have gone to college and moved out, Jenna can't help but wonder what her future holds. Her best friend, Maureen, is excited for Jenna's newfound independence. Now is the perfect time to finally book the trip to Paris they've been dreaming of since their college days. But when it comes to life's other great adventure--dating--Jenna still isn't sure she's ready to let love in ... until an unexpected encounter begins to change her mind. When Jenna's elderly mother breaks her hip, Dr. Rowan Lancaster saves the day. Despite his silent, stoic exterior, Rowan is immediately smitten with Jenna. And even though Jenna is hesitant about becoming involved with another surgeon, she has to admit that she's more than a little intrigued. But when Jenna's children approach her with shocking news, she realizes that she needs to have faith in love and embrace the unexpected--before the life she has always dreamed of passes her by.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Divorced women; Divorced mothers; Empty nesters; Man-woman relationships;
Available copies: 3 / Total copies: 5
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Perfect tunes : a novel / by Gould, Emily,author.;
Have you ever wondered what your mother was like before she became your mother, and what she gave up in order to have you? It's the early days of the new millennium, and Laura has arrived in New York City's East Village in the hopes of recording her first album. A songwriter with a one-of-a-kind talent, she's just beginning to book gigs with her beautiful best friend when she falls hard for a troubled but magnetic musician whose star is on the rise. Their time together is stormy and short-lived--but will reverberate for the rest of Laura's life. Fifteen years later, Laura's teenage daughter, Marie, is asking questions about her father, questions that Laura does not want to answer. Laura has built a stable life in Brooklyn that bears little resemblance to the one she envisioned when she left Ohio all those years ago, and she's taken pains to close the door on what was and what might have been. But neither her best friend, now a famous musician who relies on Laura's songwriting skills, nor her depressed and searching daughter will let her give up on her dreams. Funny, wise, and tenderhearted, Perfect Tunes explores the fault lines in our most important relationships, and asks whether dreams deferred can ever be reclaimed. It is a delightful and poignant tale of music and motherhood, ambition and compromise--of life, in all its dissonance and harmony.
Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Domestic fiction.; Women singers; Mothers and daughters; Single mothers; Man-woman relationships;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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Northern spy / by Berry, Flynn,1986-author.;
"A producer at the Belfast bureau of the BBC, Tessa is at work one day when the news of another raid comes on the air. The IRA may have gone underground after the Good Friday agreement, but they never really went away, and lately, bomb threats, arms drops, and helicopters floating ominously over the city have become features of everyday life. As the anchor requests the public's help in locating those responsible for this latest raid - a robbery at a gas station - Tessa's sister appears on the screen. Tessa watches in shock as Marian pulls a black mask over her face. The police believe Marian has joined the IRA, but Tessa knows this is impossible. They were raised to oppose Republicanism, and the violence enacted in its name. They've attended peace vigils together. And besides, Marian is vacationing by the sea. Tessa just spoke to her yesterday. When the truth of what has happened to Marian reveals itself, Tessa will be forced to choose: between her ideals and her family, between standing by and action. Walking an increasingly perilous road, she fears nothing more than endangering the one person she loves more fiercely than her sister: her infant son. A riveting and exquisite novel about family, terror, motherhood, betrayal, and the staggering human costsof an intractable conflict, Northern Spy cements Flynn Berry's status as one of the most sophisticated and accomplished authors of crime and suspense novels working today"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Irish Republican Army; Sisters; Single mothers;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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The Sicilian inheritance [text (large print)] : a novel / by Piazza, Jo,author.;
"Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage. On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, leaving Sara bereft with grief. But Aunt Rosie's death also opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land, and a bombshell family secret. Rosie believes Sara's great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn't die of illness as family lore has it ... she was murdered. Thus begins a twist-filled adventure that takes Sara all over the picturesque Italian countryside as she races to solve a mystery and prove her birthright. Flashing back to the past, we meet Serafina, a feisty and headstrong young woman in the early 1900s thrust into motherhood in her teens, who fought for a better life not just for herself but for all the women of her small village. Unsurprisingly it isn't long before a woman challenging the status quo finds herself in danger. As Sara discovers more about Serafina she also realizes she is coming head-to-head with the same menacing forces that took down her great-grandmother. At once an immersive multigenerational mystery and an ode to the undaunted heroism of everyday women, The Sicilian Inheritance is an atmospheric, page-turning delight"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Large print books.; Novels.; Family secrets; Inheritance and succession; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The break-up book club / by Wax, Wendy,author.;
"The story of a book club of broken hearts, where four women come together and discover the power of female friendship and find the courage to pursue their dreams, from the USA Today bestselling author of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding. Jazmine was supposed to be a professional tennis player, but her plans to go pro were quashed in a car crash. Now she's a top sports agent balancing a demanding career and single motherhood. Judith is an empty nester stuck in an unhappy marriage. After her husband's sudden death, she has to build a new life--one she never allowed herself to imagine--on top of the ashes of the old. When Sara finds out that her husband has left her for a secret second family in another city, she believes she's hit rock bottom ... until her husband steals all of his mother's money, and Sara gets a new roommate--her mother-in-law. Erin was a week away from marrying her high school sweetheart when her fiancé called off the wedding. Heartbroken, Erin is forced to navigate adulthood as a single woman for the first time. Once a month, these women meet in a historic carriage house in Atlanta seeking solace, friendship, and people who share their love of books (okay, and wine). Together, with a lot of inspiration from their favorite books, they help one another move forward, to discover who they want to be now and what will make them happy"--
Subjects: Humorous fiction.; Chick lit.; Book clubs (Discussion groups); Female friendship;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Asking for a friend : a novel / by Clare, Kerry,1979-author.;
"For readers of J. Courtney Sullivan and Emma Straub, and for fans of Firefly Lane, comes a poignant and astute novel about life, love, and the ever-evolving nature of female friendship by the author of Waiting for a Star to Fall. The bottom of Jess's world is falling out. Cocooned in her dorm in the winter of 1998, she's reeling, looking to be left alone. But a chance encounter with the older, other-worldly, elusive Clara has Jess yearning for her comforting company. Clara, newly returned from a two-year trek drifting around the world is taking a stab at normalcy for once, and the place she starts is university, where she struggles to fit in. Upon meeting Jess, though, an instant connection is forged between them, and everything seems brighter. Soon, the two are inseparable, undeniable necessities in each other's lives. But when tragedy strikes, they are unceremoniously torn apart, sent tumbling down different paths. And with each passing day, their unbreakable bond is tested more and more. As they endure love and heartbreak, loss, marriage, anxiety, isolation, and the complicated existence of motherhood, Jess and Clara must learn how to love one another through it all--and whether growing up inevitably means growing apart. Spanning across two decades, Asking for a Friend explores the tempestuous journey of female friendship, asking whether its fundamentals--history, familiarity, loyalty--are enough to make the relationship everlasting."--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Female friendship; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The life of the mind : a novel / by Smallwood, Christine,1981-author.;
"As an adjunct professor of English with a draining and tedious courseload, Dorothy feels "like a janitor in the temple who continued to sweep because she had no idea what else to do but who had lost her belief in the essential sanctity of the enterprise." No one but her partner knows that she's just had a miscarriage, not even her therapists--Dorothy being the kind of person who begins seeing a second because she's too conflict-averse to break things off with the first. It's not so much that Dorothy is ashamed of the miscarriage itself as she is of the sense of purpose the prospect of motherhood had provided, of how much she'd wanted it. The freedom not to be a mother is one of the victories of feminism. So why does she feel like a failure? (That's another thing she's ashamed of.) The Life of the Mind is a novel about endings: of youth, of aspirations, of possibility, of the illusion that our minds can ever free us from the tyranny of our bodies. And yet our minds are all we have to make sense of a world largely out of our control--which is to say our world; a world where things happen, but there is no plot. And so Dorothy must make do with what she has, as the weeks pass and the bleeding subsides. Often witty and consistently alive to how stories end and begin again, The Life of the Mind is a moving, darkly funny, and starkly original examination of how life, as they say, goes on"--
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Miscarriage; Women; Women college teachers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Women's work : a reckoning with home and help / by Stack, Megan K.,author.;
When Megan Stack was living in Beijing, she left her prestigious job as a foreign correspondent to have her first child and work from home writing a book. She quickly realized that caring for a baby and keeping up with the housework while her husband went to the office each day was consuming the time she needed to write. This dilemma was resolved in the manner of many upper-class families and large corporations: she availed herself of cheap Chinese labor. The housekeeper Stack hired was a migrant from the countryside, a mother who had left her daughter in a precarious situation to earn desperately needed cash in the capital. As Stack's family grew and her husband's job took them to Dehli, a series of Chinese and Indian women cooked, cleaned, and babysat in her home. Stack grew increasingly aware of the brutal realities of their lives: domestic abuse, alcoholism, unplanned pregnancies. Hiring poor women had given her the ability to work while raising her children, but what ethical compromise had she made? Determined to confront the truth, Stack traveled to her employees' homes, met their parents and children, and turned a journalistic eye on the tradeoffs they'd been forced to make as working mothers seeking upward mobility--and on the cost to the children who were left behind. Women's Work is an unforgettable story of four women as well as an electrifying meditation on the evasions of marriage, motherhood, feminism, and privilege.
Subjects: Biographies.; Stack, Megan K.; Child care workers; Child care workers; Working mothers; Americans; Americans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Becoming Madam Secretary / by Dray, Stephanie,author.;
"Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference. When she's not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell's Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists, including the millionaire socialite Mary Harriman Rumsey, the flirtatious budding author Sinclair Lewis, and the brilliant but troubled reformer Paul Wilson, with whom she falls deeply in love. But when Frances meets a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, sparks fly in all the wrong directions. She thinks he's a rich, arrogant dilettante who gets by on a handsome face and a famous name. He thinks she's a priggish bluestocking and insufferable do-gooder. Neither knows it yet, but over the next twenty years, they will form a historic partnership that will carry them both to the White House. Frances is destined to rise in a political world dominated by men, facing down the Great Depression as FDR's most trusted lieutenant -- even as she struggles to balance the demands of a public career with marriage and motherhood. And when vicious political attacks mount and personal tragedies threaten to derail her ambitions, she must decide what she's willing to do -- and what she's willing to sacrifice -- to save a nation"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Biographical fiction.; Novels.; Perkins, Frances, 1880-1965; Women cabinet officers; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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How hard can it be? [sound recording] / by Pearson, Allison,1960-author.; Miller, Poppy,narrator.; Macmillan Audio (Firm),publisher.;
Read by Poppy Miller."Allison Pearson's brilliant debut novel, I Don't Know How She Does It, was a New York Times bestseller with four million copies sold around the world. Called "the definitive social comedy of working motherhood" (The Washington Post) and "a hysterical look--in both the laughing and crying senses of the world--at the life of Supermom" (The New York Times), I Don't Know How She Does It introduced Kate Reddy, a woman as sharp as she was funny. As Oprah Winfrey put it, Kate's story became "the national anthem for working mothers." Seven years later, Kate Reddy is facing her 50th birthday. Her children have turned into impossible teenagers; her mother and in-laws are in precarious health; and her husband is having a midlife crisis that leaves her desperate to restart her career after years away from the workplace. Once again, Kate is scrambling to keep all the balls in the air in a juggling act that an early review from the U.K. Express hailed as "sparkling, funny, and poignant ... a triumphant return for Pearson." Will Kate reclaim her rightful place at the very hedge fund she founded, or will she strangle in her new "shaping" underwear? Will she rekindle an old flame, or will her house burn to the ground when a rowdy mob shows up for her daughter's surprise (to her parents) Christmas party? Surely it will all work out in the end. After all, how hard can it be?"--
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Domestic fiction.; Humorous fiction.; Middle-aged women; Women executives; Married people; Work-life balance; Working mothers; Man-woman relationships; Families;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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