Adult Assembly Required, by Abbi Waxman

Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN 9780593198766, May 2022

Laura Costello has left New York City and moved to Los Angeles, and is barely settled in to her new apartment when the building burns while she's out shopping.

And then it starts raining.

She takes refuge in a bookstore, and makes her first new friends. Nina the bookseller more or less adopts her, Polly decides she's the right person to fill the newly-empty room at the very eccentric rooming house she lives in. The cat that experiences her very wet clothing forgives her.

When they reach the rooming house, Maggie the owner accepts her, she gratefully accepts the room, and she meets some of her new roommates, including Impossibly Handsome Bob, who happens to have the room next to hers, and shares the bathroom with her.

Sleeping with Ward Cleaver, by Jenny Gardiner

Jenny Gardiner Books, June 2011

Claire Dolittle married her true love, and fifteen years later, she thinks he's turned into Ward Cleaver. Authoritarian, nagging, critical, and dull. Jack thinks she's distant and indifferent. When she thinks he's seeing a younger woman at his architectural firm, and an old boyfriend pops up from her past, reminding her who she used to be, she decides she has to find out if her marriage can be saved, or if it's time to get out.

With five kids, a part-time job, and a husband who expects dinner ready to eat when he gets home, Claire is under a lot of stress. It doesn't help that Jack mostly gives orders and criticisms, to both Claire and their kids. Meanwhile, the five kids, the dog, the parrot, and the cat create a lot of chaos. With a tight margin leaving time for detours to get to work, Claire is often making detours because at least one of the kids will have forgotten their lunchbox--and none of the kids like to eat the school lunch.

Then three things happen. Jack is making a business trip to Miami, and says he'll be too busy for her to come. At a work party, Claire meets Jack's "new colleague," the very lovely Julia, a fairly new hire at the architectural firm where Jack is a partner. And finally, Claire gets an email from her former fiancé, Todd. The guy who, while they were planning their wedding, abruptly dumped her for someone else.

The Last Chance Library, by Freya Sampson

Berkley Publishing Grouup, ISBN 9780593201374, August 2021

June Jones has worked at her local library since her mother became ill. She's never left her home village, or had another job.

And since her mother died, she's been less active and outgoing than she was before. It's been years since she did anything after work but go home, and read the books her mother, the town's head librarian until her final illness forced her out of work, left behind her. There's also a large collection of knickknacks and tchotchkes that her mother loved to collect. Nothing has changed in the house since her mother died.

At the library, as the library assistant, she's liked and valued, but having never left the village even to attend university, she's never going to be the librarian/

But, June is happy. Isn't she?

Emma's Tapestry, by Isobel Blackthorn

Isobel Blackthorn, March 2021

We follow Emma Taylor, née Harms, from her marriage in Philadelphia to a British merchant, to London, Singapore just before the start of World War One, Kobe in Japan, Colorado, and eventually back to London.

The story is told in very nonlinear fashion, "starting" in London in 1940, with German-born, American-raised Emma, a nurse, at the bedside of an elderly, Jewish heiress, who loves to tell stories of her friendship with Oscar Wilde. At this point, we know Emma’s husband, Ernest, is gone from her life, though we don't know why or how. Her two daughters are grown.

And she is very, very worried about anyone learning that she is German-born, not American, and has English nationality only by marriage. 

Family Secrets at Hedgehog Hollow, by Jessica Redland

Boldwood Books, ISBN 9781838890995, May 2021

Samantha and Josh are now happily engaged. Josh's father, Paul, and Paul's new wife, Beth, as well as their year-old son and infant daughter, are living with them. This is due to Paul's upcoming cancer treatment and Beth's near-fatal fall and injuries she's still recovering from.

So that's a pretty full house.

Samantha's cousin Chloe turns up, unannounced, with her baby. She's just left her husband, James, who was Samantha's boyfriend when he and Chloe became involved. She refuses to say why she's left James, and despite having ignored all Samantha's attempts at contact for weeks or more, she bitterly resents the fact that Samantha hadn't told her about her engagement to Josh.

Really, Chloe resents an awful lot. She also expects Samantha to take her in, and of course, Sam being Sam, she does. She's kind and generous, and Chloe has been her best friend as well as her cousin, at least until recently. But this is a pretty demanding situation for her, as she continues to run her hedgehog rescue.

The Echo Wife, by Sarah Gailey

Tor Books, ISBN 9781250174666, February 2021 

Evelyn Caldwell is a geneticist, a leader in the field of producing clones for specific, and generally short-term, uses, is at the height of her career, and has just won a major award. She's recently divorced, but the most important thing is to keep everyone believing it's a completely amicable divorce. Nothing to see here, move along!

The secret she needs to keep is that her ex-husband, Nathan, in the same field but on the faculty of a nearby university, not in private industry like Evelyn, has cloned her.

Cloned her, but slightly modified. Martine is calmer, gentler--more obedient. More deferential. Nathan has, he thinks, made the perfect wife.

When Evelyn finds out Martine is pregnant, she's shocked, outraged--but mostly shocked. Clones are incapable of getting pregnant, by design, and by law. Cloning is not about creating people. Clones are tools, short-term tools, who will put down like terminally ill pets when their usefulness is over. And there is no reason for them to ever be pregnant. If this is discovered, it won't just ruin Nathan. It will ruin her, too, because it's her work he's using.

Graceful Burdens (Out of Line Collection), by Roxane Gay (author), Samira Wiley (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, September 2020

At an unstated point in the future, young adults are genetically screened to determine their suitability for reproduction. Those who are deemed genetically suitable, are licensed to reproduce. Those who don't, will never be allowed to have children. It's a judgment that determines the entire course of lives--especially women's lives.

Hadley is an unlicensed woman, working a poorly paid job and living in a meager apartment. She would say that she is glad to be unlicensed, with the greaater freedom that gives in some ways. Yet, she goes to the local public library, to an upper floor--and checks out a baby, a little girl named Gemma.

Love, on the Rocks, by Elsie McArthur

Elsie McArthur, August 2020

Rachel McIntyre reached a turning point in her life. Her marriage was at an end; she had kicked her husband, Graham, out of the flat she'd inherited from her Grandma Peggy. Deciding she also wanted another change in her life, she joined LinkedIn, and very soon got an email from a distillery in the North Islands she'd never heard of. She took the chance.

Months later, she's living on tiny Inniscreag, running the business end of the distillery, and building friendships with the locals, including the distillery employees. Her boss, Edith McLeod, has also become a friend, though mostly by telephone. She's now in a care home, which is why she needed to hire a manager. Rachel has new ideas for improving the distillery's finances, and she's persuaded Edith to let her try one--opening a coffee shop and gift shop at the distillery, for those who take tours of the distillery, and other tourists who might be tempted to by making it a bit more of a destination.

Then Edith dies, Rachel learns she's Edith's heir, and Duncan Fraser, a lawyer for a big distillery company, turns up to persuade her to sell the distillery.

The Bench by Cromer Beach, by R.J. Gould

Richard Gould, August 2020

This is a charming novel about an English seaside town.

There's not really a plot here; it's about the people of Cromer getting on with their lives, with all their friendships, relationships, their businesses and professions; their children and their parents.

Sharon Kipling and Andy Powell have been a couple since they were students; they're planning to get married. She's a teacher, and deputy head, at the local primary school. He's a real estate agent. They each meet many of their fellow Cromer residents through their work.

But Sharon's father, Jamie, owns the Cromer Curiosity Shop--he says antiques, but other people say junk. Jamie has never been reluctant to talk up the value of what he's selling, dishonestly or not. He's also not reluctant to talk down, dishonestly or not, the value of what he's buying. Sharon's conflicts with her father go back to Jamie's infidelity when her mother was dying. The conflict explodes when Jamie scams Andy on the value of Andy's newly deceased father's extremely valuable collection of art and artifacts from India.

The Borrowed Boy, by Deborah Klée

Sherman House, August 2020

Angie Winkle is in her fifties, tired, and alone. She's got endometrial cancer, and knows she's going to die. The doctors haven't told her that yet, but she's reluctant to go in for the appointment where they'll make it official.

What she wants to do, is do some of the things she's never done.

One of those things is go back to Jaywick Sands, where she spent several summers with her friend, Lorraine, and Lorraine's grandparents, whom she also called Grammy and Gramps, and who made her feel like a part of the Jeffers family.

One thing she didn't plan to do is experience life as a grandmother, though she regrets never having had the experience of being a mother and grandmother. It's obviously too late for that, especially since she may have so little time left.

But life doesn't meekly follow our plans, and Angie finds herself taking responsibility for a little four-year-old boy when he becomes separated from his mother on the tube.

A Shop Girl at Sea (Pennington's #4), by Rachel Brimble

Atria, May 2020

Pennington's, the finest department store in Bath, and getting a reputation that's spreading through Britain, is still going strong. Changes are coming to the lives of some of the staff, though. Esther Culford is on maternity leave, about to give birth to her first child. Amelia Wakefield is stepping up to act as the window designer rather than the window designer's assistant, and Ruby Taylor is acting as her assistant.

But the RMS Titanic is about to set sail for New York, and Elizabeth Pennington has a plan. She's sending Mr. Weir, the head of the men's department, and Amelia Wakefield, to New York City, to check out the department stores of America's greatest city for ideas and inspiration. It's an exciting adventure for Amelia, a sign Miss Pennington and Mr. Carter have growing confidence in her, and a chance to continue to better herself.

Ruby is also getting a chance to prove herself, taking a responsibility for Pennington's windows she hadn't imagined yet.

The Antidote for Everything, by Kimmery Martin

Berkley Publishing Group978, ISBN 9781984802835, February 2020

Georgia Brown is a urologist at a clinic associated with a hospital in Charleston, South Carolina; her friend Jonah Tsukada is a family practice physician. Both the clinic and the hospital are owned by a fundamentalist megachurch, but until now they've been able to treat patients as they see appropriate.

But Jonah is an out gay man, and he welcomes gay and transgender patients. Georgia, as a urologist, treats some of the same patients. And hospital and clinic policy is about to change. While Georgia is away at a medical conference in Amsterdam, Jonah calls to tell her he's been ordered to drop all his transgender patients, or be fired.

Jonah and Georgia's lives are about to become very interesting.

The Library at the Edge of the World, by Felicity Hayes-McCoy (author), Emma Lowe (narrator)

Dreamscape Media, ISBN 9781520085265, December 2017 (original publication November 2016)

Hanna Casey returned home to the west of Ireland, daughter Jasmine in tow, after finding her English husband, barrister Malcolm Turner, in bed with another woman. Jasmine is now finished school and working as a flight attendant, and Hanna is alone with her controlling, negative mother in her mother's bungalow. Hanna is the librarian at the Lissbeg Library, running that branch of the county library system, and driving a bookmobile around the area two days a week. And in her quest for a more peaceful, satisfying life, she's set her sights on renovating the decaying cottage that she inherited from her great-aunt, Maggie Cassey. Then she learns of a plan to reorganize county services--and eliminate her job.

The Overdue Life of Amy Byler, by Kelly Harms (author), Amy McFadden (narrator)

Brilliance Audio, May 2019

Amy Byler is a school librarian at a private school in Pennsylvania, with two children (Corinne, 15, and Joe, 12), and a husband who went off on a business trip to Hong Kong three years ago, and decided not to come back. It's been a struggle, and it meant going back to work after not using her MLS degree for twelve years, but she has held everything together and provided a decent life for her kids--including the pricey private school her husband had previously paid for, by getting the librarian job there.

But it's been a struggle, and there's very little in her life except her kids and her work.

Then her husband comes back, and wants to spend a week with the kids. After some hesitation, and indeed resentment, Amy decides it's a chance to attend a librarians' conference in New York City, do a presentation on her program for making reading more attractive and less stigmatizing to kids with low reading skills, and spend time with her old friend, Talia. Talia runs a fashion magazine, and comes up with a plan: a makeover for Amy, and a rejuvenating week of fun, for which she creates the hashtag, "#momspringa."

A Forgiven Friend (Friends #3), by Sue Feathersone & Susan Pape

Lakewater Press, November 2019

This is a hard book for me to review. It's the story of two old friends going through some variously rough and important times in their lives, and definitely some rough patches in their friendship. In alternating chapters, we get first person accounts from Lee and her friend Teri.

Lee is steady, responsible, thoughtful, considerate. Teri is impulsive, generally self-centered, never thinks she's at fault for anything. Even when she's trying to be helpful, she blurts things out--and that includes things she's been specifically asked not to share. Such as, blurting out to her ex-husband, now Lee's lover, Dan, the fact that Lee thinks she may be pregnant.

And then doing it again, to Lee's aging, conservative, Catholic mother, at the reception after the funeral of Lee's father.

The friendship between Lee and Teri is genuine and strong,and even when Teri is doing absolutely shocking things, she often thinks she's "helping." Lee also tries to help Teri make better decisions, in a less ham-handed, foot-in-mouth manner, but not always when Teri is willing to listen. And as one might guess from the fact that Teri's ex-husband has moved in with Lee, relationship issues often get a bit complicated.

The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae, by Stephanie Butland

St. Martin's Press, ISBN 9781250217011, October 2019

Ailsa Rae was born with a three-chambered heart, and has spent her life with surgeries, drugs, and hospital stays to keep her alive. At 28, she's been waiting for a heart transplant for years, and now either she gets it, or she won't live out the year.

She gets it, and starts to discover what it's like to be a normal person, who can expect to live, if not a normal life span, at least one that has a few decades ahead rather than a few more weeks. This includes learning to take responsibility for herself and her decisions, in a way that previously she not only didn't need to, but truly couldn't.

It's harder than she expected, and not nearly the delight she might have expected. She needs to learn to separate a bit from her mother, Hayley, without permanently damaging the relationship of the parent who fought so hard to keep her alive. For the first time in her life, she needs to get a job--with no prior job experience to offer. She needs to find out what she enjoys doing, when walking across the room is no longer the limit of her ability to exert herself.

Christmas at Pennington's (Pennington's #3), by Rachel Brimble

Aria Fiction, September 2019

Elizabeth Pennington and her husband, Joseph Carter, have continued their remaking and revival of Pennington's department store, but their lives and the lives of their employees and friends are also continuing.

Joseph becomes even more distressed and frustrated over the never-solved murder of his first wife, Lillian, when another kind and charitable woman is killed in exactly the same circumstances--attacked while bringing food to the homeless.

Esther Stanbury, now married to Lawrence Culford, is pregnant with their first child together. Lawrence's sister Cornelia has left her abusive husband, David, taking her two children with her. She's now living with Lawrence and Esther, and working in the jewelry department at Pennington's

Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata (author), Ginny Tapley Takemori (translator), Nancy Wu (narrator)

Blackstone Audio, ISBN 9781538584552, June 2018 (original publication July 2016)

Keiko Furukara is thirty-six years old, and was a misfit everywhere, in her family and at school, until at the age of eighteen she began working in a new branch of national convenience store chain Smile Mart. The store employee manual gives her a set of rules. The uniform relieves issues of how to dress during the work day. Her coworkers provide her with examples of how to talk--and what to appear excited, happy, or angry about. She learns the rhythms and needs of the store, and even working only part-time, she becomes the store's best worker, and outlasts fellow part-timers and a total of seven managers. She's on her eighth manager when she realizes her family and her small number of friends are really worried about her, and want her to adopt a more normal, and to their minds happier, lifestyle.

Life and Other Inconveniences, by Kristan Higgins

Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN 9780451489425, August 2019

When she was eight years old, Emma London's mother committed suicide. With her mother dead, her father "unable to cope," and her maternal grandparents unable to take on a child because her grandmother, Joan, was beginning to suffer the symptoms of ALS, Emma was sent to live with her other grandmother, Genevieve London.

Genevieve had suffered her own losses, the disappearance of her other son, Sheppard, two years older than Emma's father, Clark, when Sheppard was seven, and the death of her own husband, Emma's other grandfather, Garrison, a few years later. One might think this common experience of loss would help the two bond, but Genevieve had responded to her losses by becoming very closed off and self-protective. She thought her duty to Emma was teaching her to be strong, pragmatic, and focused on success. When at 18, just about to go off to Smith College in the fall, Emma gets pregnant, Genevieve is disgusted, and kicks her out when she refuses to either have an abortion, or give the baby up for adoption.

The Dog-Walking Club, by Liz Hinds

Liz Hinds, October 2018

They started as a random group of people who just happened to walk their dogs at about the same time every day in the local park.

But Angela, whose husband brings home a more than adequate income and whose kids are grown and married, is a born organizer with nothing to organize. She decides to organize the dog walkers, and suddenly they are The Dog-walking Club.

They have nothing in common except their dogs. Angela has Mitzi, the poodle. Jemma, a photographer, has Pixie, the boxer she inherited from her uncle. Widowed Sybil, living in a retirement community, has fifteen-year-old Jock the Scottish terrier. Maggi, a supermarket shelf stocker, has a shelter mix named Bassett. Jon, a stay-at-home dad with two daughters, has Benji the spaniel.

Initially near-total strangers, meeting daily to walk together intentionally rather than by chance, they get to know each other, and care about each other.