A daughter’s unflinching exploration of the intimate and unconventional relationship she shared with her mother—a brilliant, charismatic woman haunted by a traumatic past.When Leah is eight, her mother, Cessie, abruptly flees her role as a rural housewife in search of a glamorous career in the city. In the chaotic years that follow, Cessie lurches from one apartment, job, and toxic romance to the next. In a home without rules or emotional boundaries, daughter and mother become close confidantes—a state of enmeshment that suits them both. Their bond is loving but also marked by casual indifference. Cessie’s self-described parenting style of “benign neglect” is a hilarious party joke, but for her daughter it’s reality. In Leah’s first year of high school, her mother makes a disclosure that will forever alter their relationship: She confides that from the age of 12 well into her teens, she was the lover of her...

From the bestselling author of The Continuity Girl, a funny, sharply observant novel of the pitfalls of marriage and success, and how a couple must lose it all before they can hope to find their way back.Nick and Maya Wakefield's relationship is in crisis. Though it's true they never argue, they barely speak and certainly don't have sex. The turning point came when Maya left her high-powered legal career to stay home with their now three-year-old twins, Isla and Foster. Today she feels invisible, anxious and under-appreciated, while Nick feels his wife has become neurotic and obsessed with the children. A workaholic with a wandering eye, Nick has decided he wants out. But he balks when their old friend, a divorce attorney named Gray, shows him the financial damage. As sole breadwinner, Nick will have to pay up big time to get out fast. Together, he and Gray hatch a plan—Nick will act like an ideal husband and father in order to get a better court...

Meredith Moore is the perfect continuity girl. An on-set script supervisor, she is the error catcher, the one who makes sure every take matches seamlessly with the one that came before it. But when Meredith wakes up on her 35th birthday with a sudden acute yearning for a baby, her personal sense of continuity is thrown into flux. Determined not to marry, she impulsively flees humdrum Canada and heads to London to reunite with her notoriously eccentric mother, Irma, and accept a job on a famous producer's film. Her covert plan: find a man with good genes, seduce him, and have a child--all without him knowing, of course. But in her quest to become pregnant on her own terms, she will accidentally discover a web of secrets that will change the way she envisions both her professional life and the nature of love.