Aged 13, Joan Ashby drew up a list of How to Become a Successful Writer: 1. Do not waste time. 2. Ignore Eleanor Ashby* when she tells me I need friends [*J. A.'s mother]. 3. Read great literature every day. 4. Write every day. 5. Rewrite every day. 6. Avoid crushes and love. 7. Do not entertain any offer of marriage. 8. Never ever have children. 9. Never allow anyone to get in my way.

In Uncovered, Leah Lax tells her story - beginning as a young teen who left her liberal, secular home for life as a Hasidic Jew and ending as a 40-something woman who has to abandon the only world she's known for 30 years in order to achieve personal freedom.

For Meridian Wallace - and many other smart, driven women of the 1940s - being ambitious meant being an outlier. Ever since she was a young girl, Meridian had been obsessed with birds, and she was determined to get her PhD, become an ornithologist, and make her mother's sacrifices to send her to college pay off. But she didn't expect to fall in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone. When he's recruited to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to take part in a mysterious wartime project, she reluctantly defers her own plans and joins him.

On meeting Micajah Burnett, the son of an old school friend, Eve Armanton is faced with a choice. Years of a miserable marriage means she's as broken as the beautiful antique violin she's just found, and Micajah offers a spark of life, an opportunity to reawaken her sense. If Eve takes a leap into this new world, she'll be leaving behind her old self for good. Her happiness depends on forging a new life, but at the end of her journey, who will Eve have become?

Fifteen years ago, Vida Avery arrived alone and pregnant at elite Fayer Academy. By living on campus, on an island off the New England coast, Vida has cocooned herself and her son, Peter, from the outside world and from an inside secret. For years, she has lived largely through the books she teaches, but when she accepts the impulsive marriage proposal of ardent widower Tom Belou, the prescribed life Vida has constructed is swiftly dismantled.

In June 2011, Susan Spencer-Wendel learned she had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - Lou Gehrig's disease, an irreversible condition that systematically destroys the nerves that power the muscles. While Susan cannot stop the rapid decline of her body and her inevitable death, she refuses to give up on life. A woman of immense strength and indomitable spirit, the forty-five-year-old mother of three has made every day count. After her diagnosis, Susan began taking special trips

Dr. Julie Walker wakes on a summer morning in San Francisco to find a city in chaos. Today Californians are voting on a controversial ballot initiative that will change history. With the future of the state and the nation uncertain, the streets have erupted into violence. Injured, Julie must make her way across the city by foot to the Veterans Administration Hospital, where her sister, recently returned from Afghanistan, is in labor. At the hospital a brutal scene is unfolding as a man who shares an intimate past with Julie begins to take his revenge.

The Fisher family of Alluvia, New York, is coming undone. Evelyn spends her days tending to her husband, Henry - an acclaimed and reclusive novelist slowly losing his battle with Alzheimer's. Their son, Benji, onetime star of an '80s sitcom called Prodigy, sinks deeper into drunken obscurity, railing against the bit roles he's forced to take in uncelebrated regional theater.

When Ruth Neufeld's husband and father-in-law are killed working for a relief organization overseas, she travels to Wisconsin with her young daughters and mother-in-law, Mabel, to bury her husband. She hopes the Mennonite community will be a quiet place to grieve and piece together next steps.

Pippa seems to have everything in life. But suddenly she finds her world beginning to unravel. Amid the buzzing lawnmowers and suburban coffee mornings, she starts to wonder how she came to be in this place. The answer is a story of wild youth, unexpected encounters, affairs and betrayals, and the dangerous security of marriage. It brilliantly reveals the challenges of modern life - and all the possibilities that it holds.

At a literary festival in Toronto, Linda Fallon encounters the man who was once at the center of her life: Thomas Janes, the famous poet. Since last seeing him, she has married, given birth, and been widowed. Thomas' appearance rocks Linda, raises questions she had long abandoned, and inspires new dreams.

Spanning four centuries, The Long Gaze Back features 22 new stories by some of the most talented Irish women writers working today. Taken together, the collected works of these writers reveal an enrapturing, unnerving, and piercingly beautiful mosaic of a lively literary landscape. The anthology presents an inclusive and celebratory portrait of the high calibre of contemporary literature in Ireland. These stories run the gamut from heartbreaking to humorous, but each leaves a lasting impression. They chart the passions, obligations, trials and tribulations of a variety of vividly drawn characters with unflinching honesty and relentless compassion. These are stories to savour.

An engrossing, touching and uplifting travel memoir from the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestselling author and her daughter. Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann chronicle their travels together at a time when each had reached an important turning point in her life. What emerged was a quest for Ann and Sue to redefine themselves and also rediscover one other.

Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with one hell of a hangover, a raging headache... and a pair of horns growing from his temples. Once, Ig lived the life of the blessed. Ig had it all, and more - he had the love of Merrin Williams, a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic. Then beautiful, vivacious Merrin was gone - raped and murdered, under inexplicable circumstances - with Ig the only suspect.

When Zach and I were born, our parents must have counted and recounted: limbs, fingers, toes. The complete set. They would have been disbelieving - nobody dodged the split between Alpha and Omega. Nobody. Born as twins. Raised as enemies. One strong Alpha twin and one mutated Omega; the only thing they share is the moment of their death. The Omegas live in segregation, cast out by their families, as soon as their mutations become clear.