This official Red Hat Society romance is a story of a woman who puts her life back together with the help of her best friends, three members of a bridge club. Original.

Millie Truman has a problem. Make that two problems: her sons, Mitchell and Steven. Because of their slovenly ways, both of them have relationship troubles. Now Millie finds herself with amessy, needy houseguest in Steven and having to cleanMitchell's apartment every week. Her sons are putting acrimp in her lifestyle!Widowed for 5 years she would like to travel andlive her life her way. She also wouldn't mind getting toknow her newly-divorced neighbour, Charles. Along with her good friends and fellow Red Hat members, Kim and Theresa, they hatch a plan to get the dependent men intheir lives to take care of themselves - with the Bachelor's Survival Class at their Condo's communitycentre. After some manipulation, both Steven and Mitchell start attending. Soon Millie is giving all themen in the condo her Domestic Goddess secrets - andperhaps finding love with the handsomeCharleshellip;who just happens to be her favouritestudent!

Billie Livingston’s second novel leads us to consider the nature of our hidden lives and desires—and to question whether the sky would really fall if we admitted our true needs and ceased to blush. As Cease to Blush opens, Vivian is late to her own mother’s funeral. Wearing a tight red suit, Vivian stands out like a pornographer’s dream amongst the West Coast intellectuals mourning the death of prominent feminist Josie Callwood. But for all of her bravado, Vivian finds herself emotionally numb and spiraling downward. Vivian and her mother were in constant conflict, with Josie disapproving of her daughter’s lifestyle; her inclination to use her body instead of her brain, and her so-called acting career, which has amounted to little more than playing prostitutes and the odd dead body. For her part Vivian has been invested in antagonizing her mother’s feminist ideology. As the story opens Vivian’s career, as well as her relationship with boyfriend Frank, is taking an unsavoury turn as she wades into the quick cash scheme of Internet porn with herself cast in the lead. But Josie has left a big surprise for her troubled daughter: a trunk full of mementoes from her own past, all of which point to a secret life more exotic than anything Vivian has been able to pull off. Puzzling together bits and pieces, Vivian learns that her mother was at one time a burlesque performer named Celia Dare who rubbed shoulders with the flashiest celebrities of the sixties. Vivian becomes determined to uncover the true story of her mother’s life. Chasing rumours, Vivian sets off down the Pacific coast and soon finds out that truth is a slippery snake. With only a few of her mother’s letters, some guarded anecdotes from Josie’s former confidant and a slew of books about the sixties, Vivian begins to re-create her mother’s life, placing her at the heart of some of the biggest events and scenes of the era. From the protests and beat coffeehouses of Haight-Ashbury to the frenzied nightlife of Rat Pack Vegas, from the political soirées of New York to mob meetings in glitzy Miami hotels, Celia Dare saw and did it all. Yet the glamour hid an ugly underbelly, and as Vivian peels away the layers of the past she begins to uncover her own emotional truths as well. Cease to Blush drives the bumpy road from the burlesque stages of Rat Pack Vegas to the bedroom Internet porn business, exploring just how far women have really come. In Vivian, Livingston has created the perfect character through which to explore what it means to be an independent woman today; with Celia/Josie, it’s clear that things weren’t so cut and dry in her day either. Though Celia’s story is told vividly here, its accuracy is impossible to gauge and the ghosts are not talking. But maybe this is Celia’s gift to Vivian: the ability of the past not only to illuminate the future, but to re-imagine it.

A witty and revealing roman a clef about a woman who finally gets her dream job in book publishing only to realize she's working for the industry tyrant, in trade for the first time. In a New York minute, Claire Truman lands both a plum position at a top publishing house and the man she's wanted for ten years...then reality intervenes. Her new boss is Vivian Grant, a notoriously ruthless tyrant known for her tirades, traumatized assistants, and tabloid-inspired bestsellers. Soon Claire's job is stealing more and more of her time and her relationship with her fiance begins to feel the strain. It doesn't help that she's working late nights with a brilliant-and handsome-first-time author. As Vivian's outrageous demands continue to escalate, Claire wonders if she likes where the fast track is taking her-and worries about what she might turn into...