The Official Wife

Liz is locked in a meaningless, loveless marriage with a (modern-day) polygamous husband. The second wife, apparently an educated and independent woman, becomes her competitor, and intimacy or tenderness with her husband becomes impossible for her. The author tells the story in a laconic style, and with sharp humour, making observations and criticisms about women's experiences of traditional and modern day marriage and polgamy in Africa, as well as her culture's uncritical reception of western ways. This is a new novel from one of Uganda's most prolific writers and critics.

When her Hollywood studio head husband unexpectedly divorces her to marry a pop starlet, Gracie seeks refuge at a friend's Malibu mansion, witnesses the impact of the divorce on her young daughter, and interacts with a series of dysfunctional men.

Excerpt from My Official Wife: A Novel My daughter had met and been married to this gentleman in Japan. It was in her interest, and to see her again, I was visiting Russia for the first time. I had left my Wife in Paris. She dreaded the rigors of a semi-arctic winter, and awaited my report ere deciding to visit our child, who had only spent a few weeks with us in America, and then hastened to a new home and strange but kindly relatives on the death of her husband in the Russian service in Asia. Clanging bells and shrieking whistles announced our arrival at Eydtkuhnen, the frontier of Holy Russia. Here the road changes to a six-foot gauge, so as to prevent any sudden invasion. This forces an inevitable delay in transferring from the standard gauge at the Russian frontier. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Meg Wolitzer'sprevious books includeSleepwalking, This Is Your Life,andSurrender, Dorothy.She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.

A heart-warming and nostalgic family saga from the acclaimed author of The Land Girls. Perfect for fans of Daisy Styles and Rosie Archer WILL SHE FIND HER WAY TO FREEDOM? Hull, 1960 Growing up as the daughter of a fisherman, young Lynn longs to be free from the hardship and worry of life by the docks. So when the handsome and ambitious Graham asks her to marry him, she ignores the warnings of her family and friends and accepts. But the gloss of her new lifestyle quickly begins to fade . . . Four years later, with a young son to look after, Lynn is trapped in an unhappy marriage to an uncaring and cheating husband. With no job and no money of her own, Lynn must fight to regain her independence and leave – but will Graham let her walk away so easily?

“A beautifully evocative reminder of what it means to come back from war and to face the age-old question of whether it is better to have survived or to have died. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal, starred review In the tradition of Jennifer Robson and Hazel Gaynor, this unforgettable debut novel is a sweeping tale of forbidden love, profound loss, and the startling truth of the broken families left behind in the wake of World War I. 1921. Survivors of the Great War are desperately trying to piece together the fragments of their broken lives. While many have been reunited with their loved ones, Edie’s husband Francis is still missing. Francis is presumed to have been killed in action, but Edie knows he is alive. Harry, Francis’s brother, was there the day Francis went missing in Ypres. And like Edie, he’s hopeful Francis is living somewhere in France, lost and confused. Hired by grieving families in need of closure, Harry returns to the Western Front to photograph soldiers’ graves. As he travels through France gathering news for British wives and mothers, he searches for evidence his own brother is still alive. When Edie receives a mysterious photograph that she believes was taken by Francis, she is more certain than ever he isn’t dead. Edie embarks on her own journey in the hope of finding some trace of her husband. Is he truly gone, or could he still be alive? And if he is, why hasn’t he come home? As Harry and Edie’s paths converge, they get closer to the truth about Francis and, as they do, are soon faced with the life-changing impact of the answers they discover. An incredibly moving account of an often-forgotten moment in history—those years after the war that were filled with the unknown—The Poppy Wife tells the story of the thousands of soldiers who were lost amid the chaos and ruins in battle-scarred France; and the even greater number of men and women hoping to find them again.

Marrying a handsome, wealthy lawyer and living in a Hollywood Hills mansion is a dream come true for 24-year-old Jana. From the first moment they met, Lawrence Collins swept Jana off her feet. She was willing to put her studies at a local Bible college on hold in order to wed after a six month whirlwind romance. Beautiful and vivacious, Jana knows men like Lawrence don't come along every day and she vows to be a perfect companion - the ideal wife - to this sexy, powerful man. But at what price?

"A smart, sparkling novel that is one part social satire, one part travelogue . . . Comical and cool.” —Oprah Daily In Katie Crouch's thrilling novel Embassy Wife, two women abroad search for the truth about their husbands—and their country. Meet Persephone Wilder, a displaced genius posing as the wife of an American diplomat in Namibia. Persephone takes her job as a representative of her country seriously, coming up with an intricate set of rules to survive the problems she encounters: how to dress in hundred-degree weather without showing too much skin, how not to look drunk at embassy functions, and how to eat roasted oryx with grace. She also suspects her husband is not actually the ambassador’s legal counsel but a secret agent in the CIA. The consummate embassy wife, she takes the newest trailing spouse, Amanda Evans, under her wing. Amanda arrives in Namibia mere weeks after giving up her Silicon Valley job so her husband, Mark, can have his family close by as he works on his Fulbright project. But once they’re settled in the sub-Saharan desert, Amanda sees clearly that Mark, who lived in Namibia two decades earlier, has other reasons for returning. Back in the safety of home, the marriage had seemed solid; in the glaring heat of the Kalahari, it feels tenuous. And the situation grows even more fraught when their daughter becomes involved in an international conflict and their own government won’t stand up for her. How far will Amanda go to keep her family intact? How much corruption can Persephone ignore? And what, exactly, does it mean to be an American abroad when you’re not sure you understand your country anymore? Propulsive and provocative, Embassy Wife asks what it means to be a human in this world, even as it helps us laugh in the face of our own absurd, seemingly impossible states of affairs.