Funny, honest, confronting and wise, this is a bitter-sweet true story of breaking up . . . and breaking through. ‘I hear you’re divorced?’ a friend greets me. ‘Congratulations!’ The Divorce Diaries outlines the difficult and often heart-breaking process of leaving a marriage and starting over. Sarah Quigley has garnered numerous accolades for her articles on the subject, including Columnist of the Year in the MPA Awards. Now she revisits and reconsiders the tumultuous months leading up to exiting her marriage and the equally confusing emotions that followed. Living in a tiny rooftop apartment, surrounded by glossy millionaire neighbours, Quigley begins the process of overcoming grief and loneliness. As she takes the first tentative steps back into the world of dating, she shares both her darkest and most hilarious moments as a divorcee. Against the colourful bohemian backdrop of her adopted city, Berlin, she rediscovers the satisfaction and joys of independence. 'Brave, insightful and utterly compelling' — Judges on The Divorce Diaries column, MPA Awards, Columnist of the Year

'So compellingly personal you feel you're looking over her shoulder as she sits down to write' New York Times 'Electrically entertaining ... Funny, generous, spirited and kind' The Times This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is an irresistible blend of literature and memoir revealing the big experiences and little moments that shaped Ann Patchett as a daughter, wife, friend and writer. Here, Ann Patchett shares entertaining and moving stories about her tumultuous childhood, her painful early divorce, the excitement of selling her first book, driving a Winnebago from Montana to Yellowstone Park, her joyous discovery of opera, scaling a six-foot wall in order to join the Los Angeles Police Department, the gradual loss of her beloved grandmother, starting her own bookshop in Nashville, her love for her very special dog and, of course, her eventual happy marriage. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a memoir both wide ranging and deeply personal, overflowing with close observation and emotional wisdom, told with wit, honesty and irresistible warmth.

'An extraordinary novel of family relationships, entwining love affairs and the betrayal and revenge that bind them.' Zara is a biographer, living in Sydney. She and Sergei have been married for over twenty years when an encounter with the predatory Caitt changes their life forever. Lili is a property agent in London. She and Will, her husband of ten years, are developing their dream home in Turkey when she discovers he is having an affair with a Russian pastrycook, Larissa ('Slutski', as she calls her). Eve lives in Shanghai with her husband of eight years, Henry, when she realises he has been having a dalliance with Chrystal, his ex-PA. Zara waits and hopes, but she is fatalistic. Lili's plans are complicated by her great affection for her stepson, a relationship that may not survive her divorce from Will. Eve seems prepared to dramatically cut herself loose. When a family crisis reunites them in Sydney the sisters converge, swap stories and discuss vengeance.

A “sneakily clever” (Kevin Kwan) novel of the lengths we’ll go for that thing called love, from the author of Like Mother, Like Mother “In her clever modern twist on the epistolary form, Rieger excavates the humor and humanity from a most bitter uncoupling.”—Emily Giffin, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) “A witty first novel . . . providing all the voyeuristic pleasure of snooping through someone else’s inbox.”—People Sophie Diehl is happily toiling away at an old-line New England law firm when Mayflower descendant Mia Meiklejohn Durkheim strides through the door. While dining at the most chic eatery in town, Mia was handed a most unwanted substitute for the wine list: divorce papers. Sophie reluctantly steps away from her criminal law casework to conduct Mia’s intake interview and, to her dismay, Mia insists she take the case—Sophie is just who she needs to take on her soon-to-be-ex and his thuggish lawyers. For Sophie, the whole affair sparks a hard look at the relationships in her own life with parents, friends, and lovers. A rich, layered novel told entirely through personal correspondence, office memos, e-mails, articles, handwritten notes, and legal documents, The Divorce Papers offers a direct window into the lives of an entertaining cast of characters never shy about speaking their minds.

The irresistible, candid diaries of Richard Burton, published in their entirety “Just great fun, and written out of an engaging, often comical bewilderment: How did a poor Welshman become not only a star, but a player on the world stage that was Elizabeth Taylor’s fame?”—Hilton Als, NewYorker.com “Of real interest is that Burton was almost as good a writer as an actor, read as many as three books a day, haunted bookstores in every city he set foot in, bought countless books on every conceivable subject and evaluated them rather shrewdly. . . . Apt writing abounds.”—John Simon, New York Times Book Review Irresistibly magnetic on stage, mesmerizing in movies, seven times an Academy Award nominee, Richard Burton rose from humble beginnings in Wales to become Hollywood's most highly paid actor and one of England's most admired Shakespearean performers. His epic romance with Elizabeth Taylor, his legendary drinking and story-telling, his dazzling purchases (enormous diamonds, a jet, homes on several continents), and his enormous talent kept him constantly in the public eye. Yet the man behind the celebrity façade carried a surprising burden of insecurity and struggled with the peculiar challenges of a life lived largely in the spotlight. This volume publishes Burton's extensive personal diaries in their entirety for the first time. His writings encompass many years—from 1939, when he was still a teenager, to 1983, the year before his death—and they reveal him in his most private moments, pondering his triumphs and demons, his loves and his heartbreaks. The diary entries appear in their original sequence, with annotations to clarify people, places, books, and events Burton mentions. From these hand-written pages emerges a multi-dimensional man, no mere flashy celebrity. While Burton touched shoulders with shining lights—among them Olivia de Havilland, John Gielgud, Claire Bloom, Laurence Olivier, John Huston, Dylan Thomas, and Edward Albee—he also played the real-life roles of supportive family man, father, husband, and highly intelligent observer. His diaries offer a rare and fresh perspective on his own life and career, and on the glamorous decades of the mid-twentieth century.

“Food and love and loss and resilience . . . are Hawley’s recipe for a slyly entertaining and heartening novel” (Daniel Menaker, author of The Treatment). Abigail is sure the only thing standing between her and happiness is the weight she gained along with her beloved new baby. Until she instantly loses 170 pounds of husband. When Thad declares that “this whole marriage thing” is no longer working (after commenting about how she’s turning into a bit of a pudge), a shell-shocked Abigail takes her infant daughter, Rosie, and moves back to her parents’ house. Thrown for a loop as a suddenly single new mom, she hunts for guidance in her latest weight-loss book, treating its author as her imaginary personal guru. But as Abigail follows the book’s advice, she begins to rediscover her love of cooking. Her diets have pushed her toward fat-free, joy-free foods, and her mother’s kitchen is filled with instant, frozen, and artificially flavored fare. It’s time for Abigail to indulge her own tastes—and write her own recipe for a good life . . . Bitingly funny and wise, with bonus recipes included, this novel is an ode to food and self-discovery for any woman who’s ever walked away from a relationship—or a diet—to find what true satisfaction is all about. “Revenge is sweet. Reinventing yourself . . . is even sweeter.” —Cathy Lamb, author of If You Could See What I See

Ending a toxic relationship can sometimes make us feel like we are going insane. Because we are so enmeshed with the other person, we feel nothing but fear, doubt, confusion, shame and even guilt when we consider terminating the relationship. Although we can hear a little voice inside our heads urging us to move forward, all too often our worries overwhelm us and cause us to stay stuck. We no longer know whose thoughts or feelings are in our heads. All we can feel is fear. If you are contemplating ending a relationship you know in your heart must end, but are struggling with crippling negative emotions, Lisa’s story is just the right dose of inspiration you will need as you begin facing your new roads ahead. No stranger to heartache, Lisa bravely ended her dysfunctional marriage and took her three small children with her. With nothing to cling to but hope, Lisa courageously learned to navigate her way through unknown terrains, and eventually found the will to even love again.