Welcome to Litsy!

Read Susan Breen's posts on the Penguin Blog. A witty, honest, and hugely entertaining story for anyone who loves books, or has a difficult mother. And, let�s face it, that�s practically everybody . . . On paper, Arabella Hicks seems more than qualified to teach her fiction class on the Upper West Side: she�s a writer herself; she�s passionate about books; she�s even named after the heroine in a Georgette Heyer novel. On the other hand, she�s thirty-eight, single, and has been writing the same book for the last seven years. And she has been distracted recently: on the same day that Arabella teaches her class she also visits her mother in a nursing home outside the city. And every time they argue. Arabella wants the fighting to stop, but, as her mother puts it, �Just because we�re family, doesn�t mean we have to like each other.� When her class takes a surprising turn and her lessons start to spill over into her weekly visits, she suddenly finds she might be holding the key to her mother�s love and, dare she say it, her own inspiration. After all, as a lifelong lover of books, she knows the power of a good story.