Ann Leary

"The Good House tells the story of Hildy Good, who lives in a small town on Boston's North Shore. Hildy is a successful real-estate broker, good neighbor, mother, and grandmother. She's also a raging alcoholic. Hildy's family held an intervention for her about a year before this story takes place--"if they invite you over for dinner, and it's not a major holiday," she advises "run for your life"--and now she feels lonely and unjustly persecuted. She...

"It's 1927 and eighteen-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as a secretary at a remote but scenic institution for mentally disabled women called the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. She's immediately in awe of her employer-- brilliant, genteel Dr. Agnes Vogel. Dr. Vogel had been the only woman in her class in medical school. As a young psychiatrist she was an outspoken crusader for women's suffrage. Now, at age...

Julia and her husband, Joe Ferraro, star of a hit TV show, are living the good life in Manhattan now that Joe's finally made it; or so Julia thinks until the fateful evening when she accidentally hears a voice mail on Joe's phone-- a message left by a sultry-sounding woman who clearly isn't just a friend. Now, faced with a looming Golden Globe awards show and the possibility of a destroyed marriage, Julia embarks on an accelerated self-improvement...