A chef, an event planner, and a basketball player's wife find their marriages and careers in Philadelphia challenged by new motherhood, difficult schedules, and infidelity.

A smart, laugh-out-loud debut novel about a deeply flawed but endearing stay-at-home mom, a book for anyone who took Bridget Jones to heart a decade ago-and now has kids. Lucy Sweeney has three sons, a husband on a short fuse, and a tendency toward domestic disaster. It has been years since the dirty laundry pile was less than three feet high, months since she remembered to have sex, and weeks since her toddler started using the trash can as a toilet....

For a group of four New York friends, the past decade has been largely defined by marriage and motherhood. Educated and reared to believe that they would conquer the world, they then left prestigious jobs to stay home with their babies. What was meant to be a temporary leave of absence has lasted a decade. Now, at age forty, with the halcyon days of young motherhood behind them and without professions to define them, Amy, Jill, Roberta, and Karen...

When a box of her dead mother's belongings arrive on her doorstep, Samantha discovers a mystery surrounding her grandmother, and, in investigating it, comes to terms with balancing her own role as a mother with her artistic aspirations.

Allie Harrod decides to start her own business so she can stay home with her new baby, but her problems mount as she fails to make money, her husband shows too much interest in an attractive co-worker, and her mother-in-law comes to stay.

The plans of four women--including a college student egg donor, a working-class surrogate mother, a wealthy woman, and her stepdaughter--are thrown into turmoil when the wealthy woman's husband suddenly dies and names the stepdaughter the unborn baby's guardian.

When an explosion rips through the nearly empty cafeteria of an elementary school, Rose leads two girls to safety before racing to rescue her own daughter, Melly. But Rose soon learns that she may face both civil and criminal charges for her heroics because one of the girls she saved was seriously injured in the resulting fire that killed three school staff members. Media demands, legal maneuvering, and social pressures create tension, and dark secrets...

When Lucy McCarthy, a welfare worker in Indonesia with UNICEF, returns to Mundarra, Australia, for her father's funeral, she discovers he was not in fact her father and that she is disinherited in favor of an illegitimate brother. When her old high school boyfriend, Flynn Pedersen, supports her as she awaits the results of DNA tests and seeks the identity of her real father, their renewed friendship rekindles a former attraction. Knowing Lucy's commitment...

In the wake of her husband Adam's death, Sarah, with a daughter and a baby on the way-and left with no money-moves in with Adam's mother, whom he always said was dead, but soon discovers why Adam lied as she becomes trapped in a house with a madwoman.