For Kate Klein, suburbia's been full of unpleasant surprises. Her once-loving husband is hardly ever home. The supermommies on the playground routinely snub her. Her days are spent carpooling, and at night, most of her orgasms are of the do-it-yourself variety. So when a fellow mother is murdered, Kate finds that the unsolved mystery is one of the most interesting things to happen in Upchurch. She launches an unofficial investigation with the help of two friends and discovers the secrets and lies behind the town's placid picket-fence facade....

Meet Rose Feller. She's 30 years old and a high-powered attorney with a secret passion for romance novels. She dreams of a man who will slide off her glasses, gaze into her eyes, and tell her that she's beautiful. She also dreams of getting her fantastically screwed-up little sister to get her life. together. Meet Rose's sister, Maggie. Twenty-eight years old, drop-dead gorgeous and only occasionally employed. Although her dreams of big-screen stardom haven't progressed, Maggie dreams of fame and fortune - and of getting her dowdy big sister to stick to a skin-care regime.

Jules Strauss is a Princeton senior with a full scholarship, acquaintances instead of friends, and a family she's ashamed to invite to Parents' Weekend. With the income she'll receive from donating her "pedigree" eggs, she believes she can save her father from addiction.

When her 22-year-old stepdaughter announces her engagement to her pandemic boyfriend, Sarah Danhauser is shocked. But the wheels are in motion. Headstrong Ruby has already set a date (just three months away!) and spoken to her beloved safta, Sarah’s mother, Veronica, about having the wedding at the family’s beach house in Cape Cod. When the wedding day arrives, lovers are revealed as their true selves, misunderstandings take on a life of their own, and secrets come to light.

Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are eight years old when they meet late one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenital heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she's intrigued by the boy who shows up all alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy's taken back to the emergency room and Rachel's sent back to her bed, they think they'll never see each other again.

Daisy Shoemaker can’t sleep. With a thriving cooking business, full schedule of volunteer work, and a beautiful home in the Philadelphia suburbs, she should be content. But her teenage daughter can be a handful, her husband can be distant, her work can feel trivial, and she has lots of acquaintances, but no real friends. Still, Daisy knows she’s got it good. So why is she up all night?

Now Cannie's back. After her debut novel - a fictionalized (and highly sexualized) version of her life - became an overnight bestseller, she dropped out of the public eye and turned to writing science fiction under a pseudonym. She's happily married and has settled into a life that's wonderfully predictable. As preparations for her daughter Joy's bat mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie's world. Then Joy discovers the novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception - the story her mother hid.

From the number-one New York Times best-selling author, a novel about three very different women who become friends while seeking refuge in an old beach house.

Growing up in 1950s Detroit, they live in a perfect “Dick and Jane” house, where their roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life. But the truth ends up looking different from what the girls imagined. Jo and Bethie survive traumas and tragedies.

At 23, Ruth Saunders headed west with her 70-year-old grandma in tow, hoping to be hired as a television writer. Four years later, she's hit the jackpot when she gets The Call: the sitcom she wrote, The Next Big Thing, has gotten the green light, and Ruthie's going to be the show-runner. But her dreams of Hollywood happiness are threatened by demanding actors, number-crunching executives, an unrequited crush on a boss, and her grandmother's impending nuptials.

No matter what was happening in Jennifer Weiner's life - whether good, bad, or very, very ugly - her mother, Fran, would say the same thing: It's all material. Now the number-one New York Times best-selling author and "one of the biggest names in popular fiction" ( USA Today), beloved on Twitter and hailed as "an unlikely feminist enforcer" ( The New Yorker), takes the raw stuff of her personal life and spins it into a collection of personal essays as uproariously funny and heartfelt as the best of Tina Fey and Nora Ephron.

Shannon Will is nearing thirty and has already made six trips to rehab (not that anyone's counting). But this time, she swears, will be different. She'll clean up her act, go to meetings, find a sponsor, and make a clean break with her past - starting with a new phone number. But old ties aren't so easy to sever. When Shannon's new phone starts getting messages she was never meant to see, Shannon has to decide whether to risk getting involved, or stay safely disconnected.

Abby Davis isn't wearing a skimpy bikini or sipping umbrella drinks, not when she's busy chasing around four little ones. And Matt McKinney isn't looking for fun - he's a Navy SEAL, a grown man with a long list of missions and fallen brothers. Abby has brought her children to this beach to start over, to give them the enjoyable memories they deserve. Matt has been sidelined by a combat injury, and he is haunted by the loss of his best friend and the promise he made: to remain a SEAL - focused and dedicated.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

High-school sweethearts Julia and Michael have left their humble West Virginia roots far behind for a glamorous life in Washington, D.C. As they achieve more in their careers - she as a high-end events planner, he as the CEO of his own sports-drink company - they lose themselves as a couple.