Women Friendship

When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination. Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers’ more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling.

Longtime personal assistant Georgie Mulcahy has made a career out of putting others before herself. When an unexpected upheaval sends her away from her hectic job in L.A. and back to her hometown, Georgie must confront an uncomfortable truth: her own wants and needs have always been a disconcertingly blank page. But then Georgie comes across a forgotten artifact—a "friendfic" diary she wrote as a teenager, filled with possibilities she once imagined. To an overwhelmed Georgie, the diary's simple, small-scale ideas are a lifeline-a guidebook for getting started on a new path.

Living on the island of Cyprus, Nisha is far from her native Sri Lanka. Though she longs to return home, she knows that working as a nanny and maid for a wealthy widow is the only way to earn enough to support her daughter, left behind to be raised by relatives. Yiannis is a poacher, trapping the tiny protected songbirds that stop in Cyprus as they migrate each year from Africa to Europe and selling them on the illegal market. He dreams of finding a new way of life, and of marrying Nisha.

When Claire Barclay receives news that her beloved stepfather has had a stroke, she's more than a little shaken. Leo is her last real relative, and his own children rarely check up on the old man. Claire and her husband, Art, leave New York and fly back to Scotland to care for him during the summer. Their visit makes clear that Leo is no longer capable of living on his own, but he is determined to stay in his beloved old house. Art comes up with the idea of turning the place into a conference center, thinking they could purchase the place from Leo and build him a cottage on the property.

Shari has discovered that being a single mom is one of the hardest things she has ever done. With her job, strained relationship with Tag, and trying to keep her household from falling apart, she barely has time for herself, much less dating. One night, and out of an act of sheer stupidity, she allows Fiona, the new, young move-in, to convince her to go to a club across the bridge.

Maeve Binchy's best-selling novels not only tell wonderful stories, they also give an insight into how Ireland has changed over the decades but how people remain the same: they still fall in love, sometimes unsuitably; they still have hopes and dreams; they have deep, long-standing friendships, and some that fall apart. From her earliest writing to her most recent, Maeve's work has included wonderfully nostalgic pieces and also sharp, often witty writing which is insightful and topical.

Nothing could be more out of character, but after fifty-nine years of marriage, as her husband Bernard’s health declines, and her friends' lives become focused on their grandchildren—which Jenny never had—Jenny decides she wants a little something for herself. So she secretly applies to be a contestant on the prime-time TV show Britain Bakes. Whisked into an unfamiliar world of cameras and timed challenges, Jenny delights in a new-found independence. But that independence, and the stress of the competition, starts to unearth memories buried decades ago.

Two years after escaping Gotham City's slums, Selina Kyle returns as the mysterious and wealthy Holly Vanderhees. She quickly discovers that with Batman off on a vital mission, Gotham City looks ripe for the taking. Meanwhile, Luke Fox wants to prove that as Batwing he has what it takes to help people. He targets a new thief on the prowl who has teamed up with Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. Together, they are wreaking havoc. This Catwoman is clever - she may be Batwing's undoing.

It is 1940 and twenty-year-old Charlotte Richmond watches from her attic window as enemy planes fly over London. Still grieving her beloved brother, who never returned from France, she is trying to keep herself out of trouble: holding down a typist job at the Ministry of Information, sharing gin and confidences with her best friend, Elena, and dodging her overbearing father. On her way to work she often sees the boy who feeds the birds—a source of unexpected joy amid the rubble of the Blitz. But every day brings new scenes of devastation.

Surrey, England, 1938. After 30 devoted years of marriage, Ellie Endicott is blindsided by her husband’s appeal for divorce. It’s Ellie’s opportunity for change too. The unfaithful cad can have the house. She’s taking the Bentley. Ellie, her housekeeper Mavis, and her elderly friend Dora—each needing escape—impulsively head for parts unknown in the South of France.

In Desperate Woman Seeks Friends, Kristen Strong offers her two decades of experience as a regularly relocating military spouse and one decade as a settled civilian to address head on the crisis facing women today in startling numbers: an acute loneliness and isolation due to a lack of friends and community.

With her name on the Hollywood blacklist and her life on hold, starlet Melanie Cole has little choice in company. There is her next-door neighbor, Elwood, but the screenwriter’s agoraphobia allows for just short chats through open windows. He’s her sole confidante, though, as she and her housekeeper, Eva, an immigrant from war-torn Europe, rarely make conversation. Then one early morning Melanie and Eva spot Elwood’s sister-in-law and caretaker, June, digging in his beloved rose garden. After that they don’t see Elwood at all anymore.

Dorothy Parker: renowned wit, member of the Algonquin Round Table, and more fragile than she seems. Jane Grant: first female reporter for the New York Times, and determined to launch a new magazine she calls The New Yorker. Winifred Lenihan: beautiful and talented Broadway actress, a casting-couch target. And Peggy Leech: magazine assistant by day, brilliant novelist by night.

After years of hard work, four best friends—Celeste, Yasmeen, Toni and Leslie—are finally on the verge of opening the bookstore of their dreams. A place where their community can find solace with an intriguing new read, a comforting beverage and book-loving friends. But before they can cut the ribbon, their worlds are upended.

Lauren’s life is a mess. She has a storage unit full of candles she can’t sell, a growing mountain of debt, and a teenage daughter, Dove, who barely speaks to her. Then her husband sends her a text that changes everything. Eager to escape her problems, she drives herself and Dove south to her late mother’s rundown trailer in Florida. While keeping her eccentric new neighbours at Swaying Palms at bay, Lauren begins to untangle the truth about her estranged mother. How did world-famous portrait photographer Imogen Starr end up at Swaying Palms?

At thirty-five, Mika Suzuki’s life is a mess. Her last relationship ended in flames. Her roommate-slash-best friend might be a hoarder. She’s a perpetual disappointment to her traditional Japanese parents. And, most recently, she’s been fired from her latest dead-end job. Mika is at her lowest point when she receives a phone call from Penny—the daughter she placed for adoption sixteen years ago. Penny is determined to forge a relationship with her birth mother, and in turn, Mika longs to be someone Penny is proud of. Faced with her own inadequacies, Mika embellishes a fact about her life.

Every year, executives at the trendy tech startup Aurora gather the company’s top employees for an exclusive retreat in Miami, and this year Caitlin Levy—Aurora’s newest hire—is joining the team as head of events. The benefits are outstanding: a seven-figure salary, stock shares, a discretionary bonus, limitless vacation days—what could possibly go wrong?

Nine months ago, Mark Taylor abruptly left Cedar Cove on a perilous mission to right a wrong from his past. Though Mark finally confessed his love for her, innkeeper Jo Marie Rose is unsure if he’s ever coming back. The Rose Harbor Inn barely seems the same without Mark, but Jo Marie can’t bear to lose herself in grief once more. Determined to move forward, she begins dating again, and finds companionship when she takes on a boarder who is starting a new chapter herself.

When headstrong Nadine Burton learns that the woman, she thought was her Indian Ayah was in fact her mother, she rebels against her father in a flamboyant display of disrespect and dares to dance with her two local best friends at a public party. Her father, local official, Roland Frederick Burton is furious. He arranges for her to be exiled from India and married off to Australian Martin McPherson, owner of a rubber plantation north of Singapore.

Joy and Annie are friends and roommates whose thirty-something lives aren’t exactly what they’d imagined. To make ends meet, they decide to rent their extra bedroom to Theo, who charms Joy with his salt-and-pepper hair and adoration of their one-eyed cat. When Annie goes to live with her boyfriend, Theo and Joy settle into a comfortable domesticity. Then Theo brings home Celine, the girlfriend he’s never mentioned, who is possibly the most stunning woman Joy has ever seen. Joy resolves to do whatever it takes to hold on to him, falling deeper into a hellscape of her own making.