Must Love Dogs (28 page)
“Fun and inspiring…Cook’s humor and narrative execution are impeccable.” -
Publishers Weekly
Deirdre Griffin has a great life; it’s just not her own. She’s the round-the-clock personal assistant to her charismatic, high-maintenance, New Age guru brother, Tag. As the family wallflower, her only worth seems to be as gatekeeper to Tag at his New England seaside compound.
Then Deirdre’s sometime-boyfriend informs her that he is marrying another woman, who just happens to be having the baby he told Deirdre he never wanted. While drowning her sorrows in Tag’s expensive vodka, Deirdre decides to use his massive online following to get herself voted on as a last-minute Dancing with the Stars replacement. It’ll get her back in shape, mentally and physically. It might even get her a life of her own. Deirdre’s fifteen minutes of fame have begun.
Irresistible, offbeat, yet with a thoroughly relatable and appealing heroine, Wallflower in Bloom is an original and deeply satisfying story of one woman who’s ready to take a leap into the spotlight, no matter where she lands.
Read Wallflower in Bloom now
.
Fans of HGTV and of Cook’s previous charming fiction (Seven Year Switch; Must Love Dogs) will adore this light, funny read.” -STARRED Library Journal review!!
Sandy Sullivan is a professional home stager who lives and works in the Boston suburbs. So getting rid of her own house and downsizing should be a breeze, right?
Well, best staged plans and all, Sandy’s husband, Greg, is dragging his feet and their son, Luke, has returned home and moved into the “bat cave” in the basement.
Sandy reads them both the riot act and takes a job staging a boutique hotel recently acquired by her best friend’s boyfriend. The good news is that she can spend time in Atlanta with her recently married daughter, Shannon. The bad news is that Shannon soon receives a promotion and heads back up to Boston for training, leaving Sandy and her Southern son-in-law, Chance, as reluctant roommates. And Sandy finds herself in another delicate situation when she suspects her best friend’s boyfriend may be seeing another woman on the side. Fixing up houses may turn out to be easier than fixing up lives.
Read Best Staged Plans now
.
“Bestseller Cook charms again in this lively, warm-hearted look at changing courses mid-life.” – People magazine
Seven Year Switch
is the story of a single mother whose husband ran off to join the Peace Corps, leaving her with a three-year-old. Seven years later, just when they’ve figured out how to make it on their own, he’s ba-ack – proving he can’t even run away reliably!
Now Jill has to face the fact that there’s simply no way she can be a good mom without letting her ex back into her daughter’s life. They say that every seven years you become a completely new person, and it takes a Costa Rican getaway to help Jill make her choice – between the woman she is and the woman she wants to be.
Read Seven Year Switch now.
“THE WILDWATER WALKING CLUB…a quick smart read that will get you thinking about walking, friendship and making time for things you love.” -Bookreporter
Just put one foot in front of the other. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But when Noreen Kelly takes a buyout from her job of eighteen years and gets dumped by her boyfriend in one fell swoop, it’s one step forward and a huge slide back.
She’s joined by Tess, the teacher next door, who thought she’d be spending the summer with her college-bound daughter, but now that daughter isn’t speaking to her. The Wildwater Walking Club is complete when they meet Rosie, the dutiful daughter who moved onto her parents’ lavender farm after her mother died —and dragged her family with her.
Read The Wildwater Walking Club now
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“Laugh out loud.” -Good Housekeeping
Bella Shaughnessy is addicted to lipstick with names like My Chihuahua Bites and Kiss My Lips, an occupational hazard, since she works at Salon de Paolo, her family-run beauty salon, along with her four half-brothers and sisters. The owner is her father, Lucky Shaughnessy, a gregarious, three-times divorced charmer with Donald Trump hair who is obsessed with all things Italian. After Bella’s own marriage flames out spectacularly when her half-sister runs off with her husband, Bella decides she has seen enough of the damage love can do. She makes a vow: no more men.
But then Bella meets a cute entrepreneur, and despite their bickering, they can’t seem to stay away from each other. He also gives her the business idea of her life: a makeup kit for everyone. A small, well-tressed dog also finds her way into Bella’s life, and her heart, and she decides to chance that, too. When the whole clan heads to Atlanta for a big Southern wedding, sparks fly – in a summer blowout no one will ever forget.
Read Summer Blowout now
.
“Midlife love, laughter, sibling rivalry and self-discovery…Goes down as easy as it sounds.” -People Magazine
Life’s a bit of a beach these days for Ginger Walsh, who finds herself single at 41 and back home living in the family FROG (finished room over the garage) in the fictional town of Marshbury. She’s spent a few too many years in sales, and is hoping for a more fulfilling life as a sea glass artist, but instead is babysitting her sister’s kids and sharing overnights with Noah, her sexy glassblower boyfriend with commitment issues and a dog Ginger’s cat isn’t too crazy about.
You can almost smell the salt air as you take this rollicking ride with one slightly relationship-challenged single woman, one older BlackBerry obsessed married-with-children sister on the verge of turning fifty, one dump picking father, one kama sutra t-shirt wearing mother, one movie crew come to town with a very cute gaffer, plus a couple of Red Hat Realtors and a pair of evil twins.
Read Life’s a Beach now.
I’m a huge fan of book clubs, and I’m so grateful to all the fabulous ones who have chosen my novels!
Book clubs tend to pick one of my novels after they’ve just finished something dark and depressing, and they’re ready to have some fun! Think beach read. Think vacation. Think quirky characters and dysfunctional family dynamics. Think OMG, I’m writing your life!
You can find book club questions for all my novels at
ClaireCook.com
. Feel free to
email
or
Tweet
me your questions, and to post your comments and pictures of your book club on my
Facebook author page
! Love, love those pics!
I’d also be delighted to schedule a virtual visit for your book club if we can make the times work. I’ll audio or video call your group using Skype and we can chat about the book and tell you all the fun stories behind the stories. All you need is a computer with internet access and an inexpensive microphone for an audio chat. If you have a webcam, we can make it a video chat.
If you’d rather talk on the telephone, we can set up a speaker phone chat instead.
We can talk about the story, and the story behind the story, the journey of writing a book, and even the thematically related food and wine you’re serving! I truly enjoy chatting with book clubs, and I can’t wait to meet yours!
Just send an email to ClaireATClaireCook.com with BOOK CLUB in the subject heading and let me know when your book club would like to meet to discuss one of my novels. I’ll do my best to make the date work.
Thank you so much for your support — and happy reading!
xxxxxClaire
Claire Cook
Claire Cook wrote her first novel in her minivan outside her daughter’s swim practice when she was 45. At 50, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the adaptation of her second novel,
Must Love Dogs
, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack. Midlife rocks!
She is now the bestselling author of 9 novels, including her most recent,
Wallflower in Bloom
, which
Publishers Weekly
calls “fun and inspiring” and says, “Cook’s humor and narrative execution are impeccable.”