"As a young mother with a toddler and a live-in boyfriend, Maggie Fisher's job at a checkout counter in downtown Phoenix doesn't afford her much financial flexibility. She dreams of going to college and becoming a teacher, options she squandered when she fled her family home as a teenager. When Maggie stumbles onto an ad offering thousands of dollars to women who are willing to gestate other people's babies, she at first finds the concept laughable....

"Nestled in New York's Hudson Valley is a luxury retreat boasting every amenity: organic meals, private fitness trainers, daily massages--and all of it for free. In fact, you're paid big money to stay here--more than you've ever dreamed of. The catch? For nine months, you cannot leave the grounds; your movements are monitored, and you are cut off from your former life while you dedicate yourself to the task of producing the perfect baby. Jane, an...

"As a little girl growing up in Boston, Miriam Bluestein fantasized about a life lived on stage, specifically in a musical. Get married, have a family--sure, maybe she'd do those things, too, but first and foremost there was her career. As a woman, she is both tormented and consoled by those dreams in her day-to-day existence with her family, including a short-tempered husband, a cranky mother, and three demanding children, one of whom, Ethan, shows...

"The Nursery details a new mother's spiraling descent into a state of complete disaffection. Following the birth of her baby, "Button," she has a difficult time identifying with her post-pregnancy body, Button "itself," and finding comfort in her relationships--with the exception of her elderly upstairs neighbor, whom she strikes up a tentative friendship with. Plagued by intrusive thoughts and paranoia, she withers in the self-imposed prison of her...

"In Colombia's brutal jungle, childless Damaris develops an intense and ultimately doomed relationship with an orphaned puppy. Colombia's Pacific coast, where everyday life entails warding off the brutal forces of nature. In this constant struggle, nothing is taken for granted. Damaris lives with her fisherman husband in a shack on a bluff overlooking the sea. Childless and at that age 'when women dry up', as her uncle puts it, she is eager to adopt...

"Cerys leaves her life behind in a fiery wreck. Lily slips away from hers early one morning, silent as a shadow. Both are mothers. And both are desperate. When the two women are thrown into each other's paths, they strike a tentative bond. Cerys is a mother with no children to care for anymore, and Lily is doing all she can to take care of a four-year-old on her own. But each keep secrets from the beginning--the scars, the loneliness, and, most importantly,...

"Shackled to her small town, vintage gift shop owner Jane Tanner longs to become a mother before her biological clock ticks out and drunkenly propositions the worst possible candidate, her sister's ex-boyfriend, who is on board until they're soon reminded just how messy life is."--

The "emotions, identities, and relationships of three very different American women living in same small expat community in Hong Kong... As each woman struggles with her own demons, their lives collide in ways that have irreversible consequences for them all."-- "Three very different American women livie in the same small expat community in Hong Kong. Mercy, a young Korean American and recent Columbia graduate, is adrift, undone by a terrible incident...

"A spellbinding, deeply felt debut novel--haunting and poignant, soaring and gorgeously wrought--about motherhood, freedom, and our own power to shape our destinies. Oona grew up on the island of Inis: a wind-blasted rock off the coast of Ireland where the men went out on fishing boats and the women tended sheep; where the only book was the Bible; and where girls stayed at home until they became mothers themselves. Even as a child, Oona knew she wanted...

"Amelia Morris's Wildcat is an uproariously funny, surprisingly touching story of one woman's journey through motherhood and female friendship, in a society that plays fast and loose with information. New mother, aspiring writer, and former shopgirl Leanne has lost her way. As she struggles with both her grief and the haze of motherhood, it also becomes clear that her best friend, the default queen of East Side Los Angeles, Regina Mark, might not...