FREEBIE ALERT
Free
days: 8-10 January
Chick
lit/women's fiction/romance
Blurb:
Being
short with big boobs means living life off-balance. Isabel knows this all too
well; at five feet nothing with a tendency to tip over in heels, she's
struggled for twenty-five years to make clothes, careers and boyfriends fit.
Enter Michael. Divorced father, recovering alcoholic and fifteen years her
senior--he was the last guy she thought would make the cut. But when he
proposed over a pastrami sandwich in a NYC deli on the anniversary of their
first date, Isabel knew, improbably, that he was the one.
Fifteen mostly happy years and two kids later, Isabel walks into her living room to discover her husband dead on the floor, leaving her a widow at forty-one. At Micheal's funeral, a guest solemnly informs her that the official mourning period for a Jewish widow is thirty days. At the moment, Isabel can't imagine a time when she will stop grieving. Not helping the process is this: as a single mom living in the very married suburbs, for the first time in fifteen years Isabel once again just doesn't fit in.
It takes her four year-old daughter's request for a new daddy to set Isabel on a journey through online dating, shifty matchmakers and painfully orchestrated single dinners. But after endless dates, a torrid affair with an unemployed, passive-aggressive neighbor and a story on page three of the New York Daily News, Isabel begins to realize that another man may not be the answer and, surprisingly, that's when things begin to change for the better...
Excerpt
Our
blue and white paisley duvet lay crumpled on the bed, but Michael was no longer
under it. The air conditioner beckoned me with a loud rumble, and I stood in
front of it for a moment, letting the stale breeze cool my skin. Sufficiently
chilled, I turned and walked back down the hall into the heavier air of our
living room. It was then that I saw him, lying at the foot of the green
overstuffed chair, a few inches away from his favorite perch on the well-worn,
beige linen sofa. Except for the small pool of blood that had formed on the rug
beside his head, he looked as if he might still be sleeping.
“I think my
husband is dead,” I said, shaking. There was no thought. Just words and sweat
and panic. “What should I do?”
Amy
Holman Edelman lives in New Jersey with her husband, children and Irish Jack
Russell, Roxy. She is the also author of The Little Black
Dress ('97).
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