Andi has spent much of her adult life looking for the perfect man, and at 37, she's finally found him: Ethan, a divorced father of two. But in his daughter Emily’s eyes, Andi is an obstacle to her father’s love, and Emily will do whatever it takes to break her down.

In two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey’s latest novel, an automaton --- in its beautiful, uncanny imitation of life --- will link two strangers confronted with the mysteries of creation, the miracle and catastrophe of human invention, and the body’s astonishing chemistry of love and feeling.

May Lynn, once a pretty girl who dreamed of becoming a Hollywood star, is now dead. Sue Ellen, her strong-willed teenage friend, sets out to dig up May Lynn's body, burn it to ash, and take those ashes to Hollywood to spread around. But Sue Ellen has some stolen money that her enemies will do anything to get back.

"The first time I saw Marian Ballantine she looked like a burst of bittersweet among the winter branches..." And so begins a tale of love lost and found, the rekindling of a passion for life that two people discover with each other, and the complex dynamics of family and friendship.

Eleanor Hart had made a brilliant marriage in New York, but it ended in a scandalous divorce and 30 days in rehab. Now she finds that she will still need a husband to be socially complete. However, through one misstep after another, Ellie mishandles her second act. Her options narrow and future prospects contract, until she faces a desperate choice.

Gin Mitchell leaves the dusty farmland of 1960s Oklahoma to follow her husband to the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, only to find a world of wealth, glamour, American privilege, and corruption. Award-winning author Kim Barnes weaves a mesmerizing tale of Americans out of their depth in Saudi Arabia, a marriage in peril, and one woman’s quest for the truth, no matter what it might cost her.

Amina leaves Bangladesh for Rochester, New York, and for George Stillman, the husband who met and wooed her online. For Amina, the decision echoes the arranged marriages of her home country, while George finds Amina “straightforward” and likes that she “doesn’t play games.” Yet each is hiding something from the other.

Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past doesn't recede. Even as the terrible consequences of long-ago events crash together in the present and threaten to ruin lives, they will come to the startling realization that they may not want to forget the past at all.

In this first collection of short stories from bestselling author Jess Walter, the pieces range from comic tales of love to social satire and suspenseful crime fiction. Among them are "We Live in Water," in which a lawyer returns to a corrupt North Idaho town to find the father who disappeared 30 years earlier, and the collection's final story, which transforms slyly from a portrait of Walter's hometown into a moving contemplation of our times.

Alice Buckle sees herself as a wife, mother, drama teacher, Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions. Then an anonymous online study called “Marriage in the 21st Century” shows up in her inbox. She becomes Wife 22 and is assigned a caseworker (Researcher 101). Along the way, she shares her innermost thoughts and secrets in this survey, and her confessions end up making some sparks fly.