First light

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Carol Dawson

The first one was her true soul mate, her mentor in everything from art to sex. The second was practical, a whiz with numbers, and with a bigger heart than Lulu ever imagined. The third could cast terrifyingly powerful spells, though they weren't enough to save the marriage. The fourth kept her at arm's length. The fifth was a haunting presence, a constantly unsettling force in Lulu's life. And then there were the husbands, no small handfuls themselves, each as complicated as their mothers. But the real forces in Lulu's life, no matter the men, have been the mothers-in-law that came along with them. Now, with her son's unexpected marriage, Lulu has become the sacred mother to whom the daughter-in-law must bow, the source for secrets about her own son - his sins, his past, his potential.

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Elizabeth Spencer

A collection of nine short stories explores the emotional fault lines that lie just beneath the surface of happy family life.

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Mary-Beth Hughes

From the outside in, the Devlin family lead almost perfect lives. Dashing father Nick is a successful businessman long married to sweetheart Jean, who upholds the family home and entertains, while daughter Lily attends Catholic school and is disciplined into modesty by the nuns. Under the surface, however, the Devlins are broken by the death of their little boy, Cubbie. When Nick's older brother, Lionel, a man driven by callous and rapacious urges, inducts Nick into the cutthroat world of cosmetics, Nick's sudden rise to the top brings the Devlin family to a fresh start in London, where they join the ranks of the city's social elite. But as the veneer of their glamorous new life abroad starts to wear thin, the Devlin family are further fragmented by betrayals and become victims of the cruelest kind of hurt.

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Jay McInerney

"The crowning achievement from the preeminent writer of his generation: following Brightness Falls and The Good Life, Bright, Precious Things builds on a series increasingly akin to John Updike's Rabbit novels but with a long-standing if weathered couple at its heart. Russell and Corrine Calloway seem to be living the New York dream: book parties one night and high-society charity events the next; jobs they care about (and actually enjoy); twin children, a boy and a girl whose birth was truly miraculous; a loft in Tribeca and summers in the Hamptons. But all of this comes at a high cost. Russell, an independent publisher, has cultural clout but minimal cash; as he navigates an industry that requires, beyond astute literary taste, constant financial improvisation, he encounters an audacious, expensive and potentially ruinous opportunity. Meanwhile, instead of seeking personal profit in this incredibly wealthy city, Corrine is devoted to feeding its hungry poor, and they soon discover they're being priced out of their now fashionable neighborhood. Then Corrine's world is turned upside down when the man with whom she'd had an ill-fated affair in the wake of 9/11 suddenly reappears. As the novel unfolds across a period of stupendous change including Obama's historic election and the global economic collapse he inherited the Calloways will find themselves and their marriage tested more severely than they ever could have anticipated"--