Showing results by author "Judith Arnold" in All Categories

Recent retiree Ruth Singer is reflecting on her life and wondering what direction it might have taken if she'd made different choices. What if she'd had her tubes tied before her difficult youngest child was born? What if she'd run off with Danny Fortuna when she'd had the chance? Not only does Ruth ponder these questions, she lives those what-if lives in her imagination. As the chaos of her real life swirls around her, she contemplates the roads she never took, the choices she never made, and comes to understand how she became the woman she is - and why. 

When one of Lainie Lovett’s closest friends suspects her husband of cheating on her, she turns to Lainie for help. He insists he’s innocent, but he’s seen leaving the other woman’s house - shortly before the other woman turns up dead, apparently killed after pigging out on Happy’s Hamburgers. Now, he’s suspected of murder, and he begs Lainie to clear his name. How can she say no? His wife is the goalie of the Rockettes, Lainie’s soccer team.

Summertime, and the living should be easy. School’s out, and Lainie Lovett is on vacation, spending her mornings running sports clinics for children and her evenings playing with the Rockettes. But things get a whole lot less easy when one of Lainie’s teammates urges her to visit Sunrise Village, an assisted-living residence for the elderly, where various items have gone missing: a ring, a jewelry box, a bottle of prescription medicine...and George Vandercloop’s considerable fortune, which he’d kept stuffed inside his mattress and which disappeared the night he died.

The party celebrating Lainie Lovett’s father-in-law’s birthday gets exciting pretty quickly when one of the guests keels over just as the magnificent golf-themed birthday cake is being served. That he happens to be the most obnoxious guest at the shindig leaves the other guests less than shattered by his sudden passing. But when it’s determined that he didn’t die of natural causes, and a few of the guests, including the guest of honor himself, arouse suspicion, Lainie’s in-laws ask her to step in and clear her father-in-law’s name. 

Lainie Lovett’s passions, in no particular order, are her son and daughter, the fourth grade class she teaches, and the Rockettes - the recreational league women’s soccer team in the sleepy Boston suburb of Rockford, Massachusetts. When Lainie spots the husband of one of her Rockettes teammates canoodling with another woman under the electric jalapenos at El Camino Restaurant one night, she is discreet - until he turns up dead, shot with a nail gun in a half-built McMansion that his construction company was developing.

From the time they were eight years old, Kip Stroud and Shelley Ballard spent their summers growing up together on Block Island. As teenagers, they argued about books and learned from each other a little about the way boys and girls viewed each other. They were best friends - until a tragedy in Shelley's life tore them apart. Twelve years later, Kip has had to face his own tragedy. When he returns to the island to heal, he discovers that Shelley is now living there, older and wiser but bearing emotional scars.

Redefining who we are in our family takes courage and an indestructible sense of humor. Being the middle child is never easy, but 36-year-old Jill Bendel is about to find out just how hard that job is when her mother throws away her sensible pumps, packs up her collection of classical music and runs away from home. Longtime wife and mother Ruth Bendel loves her family but hates her life. Husband Richard doesn't even know how the steam iron works, let alone how a woman works.

Jamie McCoy is the ultimate guy: 30 years old, carefree and professionally successful as the writer of a nationally syndicated humor column called "Guy Stuff". Nine and a half months ago, he spent a week basking on the beach in Eluthera and indulging in a fling with a woman at the resort. Never did he expect to find the unplanned result of that fling - a healthy, wailing baby named Samantha - strapped into a car seat on his back porch, along with a suitcase full of diapers and infant apparel and a note informing Jamie that he's her father.

Molly Saunders co-founded the Daddy School to help men become better fathers. She wants to help John, not just by providing a space for his two-year-old son in her preschool but also by teaching him how to deal with his son's demands - and teaching him that despite the occasional brutality of his work, he can still be a loving, vulnerable man. When it comes to learning the skills he needs to raise his son well, John is an A student. But Molly's lessons in love prove much more challenging.

Book Three of the Daddy School series, originally published in 1998. Dennis Murphy's rambunctious seven-year-old twins swear he's the best lawyer in Arlington, Connecticut. They don't make his job easy, however. When the nanny he hires to watch the twins walks out on them one afternoon while Dennis is meeting with the opposing attorney concerning a libel case, Dennis is forced to bring his work home with him

As a child, Annie Baskin envied her older sister. Sarah was beautiful, smart, popular, and contemptuous of her messy, graceless kid sister. Annie grew up in Sarah’s shadow, knowing she was second-tier, second-rate, an also-ran. The other Baskin girl.