Maddie Dawson

From the bestselling author of Matchmaking for Beginners comes a novel about love, loss, and the beautiful mess of family. Marnie MacGraw and Patrick Delaney have been in love for a few years now, enough to realize that they are imperfectly perfect together. Still, there are some things that maybe need a little attention. Marnie’s ebullient; he’s brooding. She thrives on change; he prefers stability. She sees marriage and parenthood in their future, but he can’t see beyond the shadow of an earlier tragedy. Then an eight-year-old surprise from Patrick’s past shows up on their doorstep, cartwheeling into their lives and spinning things in all directions. While it’s not exactly the change she envisioned, it looks like instant family to Marnie. But Patrick, afraid of being hurt again, retreats further into himself. Suddenly, two very different pieces of a beautiful puzzle find it harder and harder to fit. How can Marnie trust in the magic of the universe when it seems to be doing its best to knock her off her feet? But some love stories are worth waiting for. And what’s love without a little chaos anyway?

“Quite wonderful. . . . Like Anne Tyler, Shelton seems to possess a nearly boundless capacity for empathy. She has the ability to make us love her characters for their faults, not in spite of them.” —Connecticut Post Warmhearted, insightful, funny and poignant, bestselling author Maddie Dawson takes the unfathomable ways of love and family, and celebrates [the joys of] the ordinary craziness of being human. “You know what people really need? Somebody who will listen hard and then find a way to tell them, ‘It’s not all your fault. It’s going to work out fine. Don’t give up.’” So advice columnist ‘Dear Lily’ Brown deeply believes. But Lily could write a letter to herself, asking what to do about an ex-husband who still wants her dating advice, how to redecorate the family home she’s kept exactly the same since her parents died tragically young, and how to move on with her strangely becalmed life…And oh, yes, what to do when your wild-child estranged sister storms back into town, blowing your nicely arranged life into disarray. “As her protagonist tries to learn that she cannot and does not have to control everyone around her and tries to enjoy the "fun" of a dysfunctional family life, Dawson delves into family relationships with humor and empathy, making this a pleasurable read.” –Booklist “Shelton’s greatest talent is a gift for juxtaposing comedy and tragedy to the pulsing beat of the modern-day mating dance.” —BookPage **This book was originally published under the pen name, Sandi Kahn Shelton ***

The search for happiness turns a woman’s life upside down in a warm, quirky, and bighearted novel about the joys and chaos of finding love by the bestselling author of Matchmaking for Beginners. After too many dates, thirtysomething Mimi Perkins is still single, unmoored, and longing for love. So when Ren Yardley—a handsome, divorced fellow drama teacher and single father—falls in love with her and proposes, she’s sure this is at last the good news her psychic predicted. Soon after proposing, Ren receives the devastating news that his ex-wife has been in a debilitating car accident, prompting him to temporarily move back into his former home to care for her and his daughters. The unfailingly loyal Ren also wants to keep Mimi close, so she packs up her life in New York City and follows him to New Haven, Connecticut. There, she finds a job and unexpected community at a quirky local daycare. But as time goes by, it begins to seem that Ren and his estranged family might be slowly reuniting, and Mimi has to figure out what she’s willing to fight for and what she needs to let go of. One thing is for she would have never guessed that her psychic was right after all. Life’s twists, turns, and disasters just might lead her to unexpected happiness.

Marnie MacGraw wants an ordinary life—a husband, kids, and a minivan in the suburbs. Now that she’s marrying the man of her dreams, she’s sure this is the life she’ll get. Then Marnie meets Blix Holliday, her fiancé’s irascible matchmaking great-aunt who’s dying, and everything changes—just as Blix told her it would. When her marriage ends after two miserable weeks, Marnie is understandably shocked. She’s even more astonished to find that she’s inherited Blix’s Brooklyn brownstone along with all of Blix’s unfinished “projects”: the heartbroken, oddball friends and neighbors running from happiness. Marnie doesn’t believe she’s anything special, but Blix somehow knew she was the perfect person to follow in her matchmaker footsteps. And Blix was also right about some things Marnie must learn the hard way: love is hard to recognize, and the ones who push love away often are the ones who need it most.

A funny, warmhearted novel about falling in love, falling apart, and pulling it all together again by the bestselling author of Matchmaking for Beginners. After three marriages and a lot of living, resilient Billie Slate knows exactly what trouble love can bring. Now she’s reinvented herself as the Heartbreak Bunny, an on-call performance artist who can heal anyone who’s been burned by that four-letter word, LOVE, by hopping about and whisking away sad mementos from their past relationships. Call it magic. Call it peculiar. But her bunny costume is as perfect as her breakup SNAP OUT OF IT. As Billie’s business goes viral and skyrockets her to sudden fame, her comfortable life turns her daughter’s marriage begins to fail, and Victor, aka Worst Husband Ever, wants not only to bond with the daughter he left but to win Billie back. Only, he’s got a charming widower might be falling in love with a woman who no longer believes in love. As every romantic notion Billie had pushed away starts pushing back, the Heartbreak Bunny must confront the possibility that, just maybe, love has some tricks left up its sleeve.

Phronsie Linnelle was conceived at Woodstock in a serendipitous liaison between a free-spirited hippie and a farmer’s son and was born with magical wonder flickering in her DNA and rationality knit into her bones. All her life she’s been torn between the two. But now that she’s been betrayed by both love and the mother she once idolized, her rational side is winning. So when her best friend from childhood proposes that they give up on romance and marry each other, Phronsie agrees. Who better to spend your life with than your best friend? Maybe the connection they already have is love. Maybe there’s no falling to be done. But immediately after they announce their engagement, she encounters someone who makes a very charming and compelling argument for revisiting romance. While her even-keeled stepmother argues for the safety that comes with her new engagement and her mother relays messages from the universe to hold out for true love, Phronsie must look to her own heart to find the answers that have been there all along.

A heartfelt and exceptionally human novel about the best mistakes a person can make    Jonathan and Rosie have been together so long they finish each other’s sentences—so when he (finally) proposes and asks her to move across the country with him, everyone is happily surprised.   But when things suddenly unravel, Rosie sends Jonathan packing and moves back home with Soapie, the irascible, opinionated grandmother who raised her. Now she has to figure out how to fire Soapie’s very unsuitable caregiver, a gardener named Tony who lets her drink martinis, smoke, and cheat at Scrabble.   It’s meant to be a temporary break, of course—until Rosie realizes she’s accidentally pregnant at 44, completely unequipped for motherhood, and worse, may be falling in love with Tony, whose life is even more muddled than hers. When Soapie reveals a long-hidden secret, Rosie wonders if she has to let go of her fears, and trust that the big-hearted, messy life that awaits her just may be the one she was meant to live.Now with a comprehensive Reader's GuideFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

A journey into the what-ifs that haunt us all, The Stuff That Never Happened is an intricate, heartfelt examination of modern marriage that brims with truths about the nature of romantic love.What if you were married to someone for twenty-eight years but in love with another? What if you were in love with them both? Annabelle McKay knows she shouldn’t have any complaints. She’s been in a stable marriage that’s lasted almost three decades and has provided her with two wonderful children, thousands of family dinners around a sturdy oak table, and a husband so devoted that he schedules lovemaking into his calendar every Wednesday morning. Other wives envy the fact that Grant is not the type of man who would ever cheat on her or leave her for a younger woman. The trouble is Annabelle isn’t sure she wants to be married to Grant anymore. The trouble is she’s still in love with someone else. In the early tumultuous years of her marriage, Annabelle carried on a clandestine affair with the one person whose betrayal would hurt her husband the most. When it ended, she and Grant found their way back together and made a pact that they would never speak of that time again. But now years later, with her children grown and gone, and an ominous distance opening between them, she can’t help but remember those glorious, passionate days and wonder if she chose the right man. Then, when called to New York City to help care for her pregnant daughter, Annabelle bumps into her old lover. Offered a second chance at an unforgettable love, she must decide between the man who possesses her heart and the husband who has stood squarely by her side.

Three women, three lives, and one chance to become a family—whether they want to or not. Newly orphaned, recently divorced, and semiadrift, Nina Popkin is on a search for her birth mother. She’s spent her life looking into strangers’ faces, fantasizing they’re related to her, and now, at thirty-five, she’s ready for answers. Meanwhile, the last thing Lindy McIntyre wants is someone like Nina bursting into her life, announcing that they’re sisters and campaigning to track down their mother. She’s too busy with her successful salon, three children, beautiful home, and…oh yes, some pesky little anxiety attacks. But Nina is determined to reassemble her birth family. Her search turns up Phoebe Mullen, a guarded, hard-talking woman convinced she has nothing to offer. Gradually sharing stories and secrets, the three women make for a messy, unpredictable family that looks nothing like Nina pictured…but may be exactly what she needs. Nina’s moving, ridiculous, tragic, and transcendent journey becomes a love story proving that real family has nothing to do with DNA.

Марні Макґров хотіла б звичайного життя: чоловіка, дітей і заміський будинок. Вона готується до весілля з красивим хлопцем і впевнена, що нарешті всі її мрії здійсняться. Проте Блікс Голлідей, дивакувата двоюрідна бабця нареченого, природжена сваха, каже, що невдовзі все зміниться й на Марні чекає інше, яскраве й насичене, майбутнє. Зрештою, стається саме так, як пророкувала Блікс. Коли шлюб розлітається на друзки після двох жалюгідних тижнів, Марні, зрозуміло, ошелешена. Та ще більше вона дивується, дізнавшись, що Блікс заповіла їй будинок у Брукліні разом зі своїми незавершеними «проєктами»: розбитими серцями, дивакуватими друзями та сусідами, які тікають від власного щастя. І хоча дівчина не вірить у свою винятковість, Блікс завжди знала, що Марні — ідеальна людина, щоби піти її стопами. А ще Марні доведеться переконатися на власному досвіді: іноді кохання геть не таке, як ми собі малюємо, а ті, хто відштовхує любов, якраз найбільше її потребують