50 Books.

1. Life Is An Open Secret-Think About It
(2007)
Zarina A. Bakar

Life is an Open Secret is a book written with the beautiful and ancient art of storytelling. It represents the reality of life challenges faced by modern society across geographical, race, faith, gender and age boundaries. The author shared 19 stories aiming to tease the readers’ mind with a variety of mind-boggling questions to think and ponder upon. The stories are to inspire the Life is an Open Secret readers to ultimately reflect and change should need be according to the guidelines from Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). These refreshing stories are inspirational, motivational, humorous and wittily crafted without losing any of its substance.

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2. Shopaholic Takes Manhattan
(aka Shopaholic Abroad)
(The second book in the Shopaholic series)
(2001)
Sophie Kinsella

With her shopping excesses (somewhat) in check and her career as a TV financial guru thriving, Becky's biggest problem seems to be tearing her entrepreneur boyfriend, Luke, away from work for a romantic country weekend. And worse, figuring out how to "pack light." But packing takes on a whole new meaning when Luke announces he's moving to New York for business-and he asks Becky to go with him!

Before you can say "Prada sample sale," Becky has landed in the Big Apple, home of Park Avenue penthouses and luxury department stores.

Surely it's only a matter of time until she becomes an American TV celebrity, and she and Luke are the toast of Gotham society. Nothing can stand in their way, especially with Becky's bills miles away in London.

But then an unexpected disaster threatens her career prospects, her relationship with Luke, and her available credit line! Shopaholic Takes Manhattan-but will she have to return it?
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3. Shopaholic Ties the Knot
(The third book in the Shopaholic series)
(2002)
Sophie Kinsella

Rebecca Bloomwood has the dream job. She's a personal shopper, so is able to spend other people's money all day instead of her own. And she gets paid for doing it. The perfect job, the perfect man - gorgeous Luke Brandon - and now... the perfect wedding. Yes, Luke has proposed and wedding bells are in sight. No excuses are needed to start the shopping trip of all time. And Becky's parents are just assuming that the wedding will be at home - a marquee in the garden and Becky in her mum's wedding dress, which she's been saving specially for the occasion. But Luke's mother has very different ideas - a huge affair in New York in a forest glade setting - or perhaps a Venetian Ball, or a fin de siecle extravagance? Now Becky's getting confused. She doesn't want to say 'no' to anyone. The plans are going ahead, and soon it will be too late to turn back - from either wedding...
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4. My Sister's Keeper
(2004)
Jodi Picoult

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate -- a life and a role that she has never challenged...until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister -- and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.

My Sister's Keeper examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child's life, even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Is it worth trying to discover who you really are, if that quest makes you like yourself less? Should you follow your own heart, or let others lead you? Once again, in My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult tackles a controversial real-life subject with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity.
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5. My Best Friend's Girl
(2006)
Dorothy Koomson

What would you do for the friend who broke your heart? Best friends Kamryn Matika and Adele Brannon thought nothing could come between them - until Adele did the unthinkable and slept with Kamryn's fiance, Nate. Worse still, she got pregnant and had his child. When Kamryn discovered the truth about their betrayal she vowed never to see any of them again. Two years later, Kamryn receives a letter from Adele asking her to visit her in hospital. Adele is dying and begs Kamryn to adopt her daughter, Tegan. With a great job and a hectic social life, the last thing Kamryn needs is a five year old to disrupt things. Especially not one who reminds her of Nate. But with no one else to take care of Tegan and Adele fading fast, does she have any other choice? So begins a difficult journey that leads Kamryn towards forgiveness, love, responsibility and, ultimately, a better understanding of herself.
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6. The Hungry Years
(2005)
William Leith
William Leith began the eighties slim; by the end of that decade he had packed on an uncomfortable amount of weight. In the early nineties, he was slim again, but his weight began to creep up once more. On January 20th, 2003, he woke up on the fattest day of his life. That same day he left London for New York to interview controversial diet guru Dr. Robert Atkins. But what was meant to be a routine journalistic assignment set Leith on an intensely personal and illuminating journey into the mysteries of hunger and addiction.
From his many years as a journalist, Leith knows that being fat is something people find more difficult to talk about than nearly anything else. But in The Hungry Years he does precisely that. Leith uses his own pathological relationship with food as a starting point and reveals himself, driven to the kitchen first thing in the morning to inhale slice after slice of buttered toast, wracked by a physical and emotional need that only food can satisfy. He travels through fast food-scented airports and coffee shops as he explores the all-encompassing power of advertising and the unattainable notions of physical perfection that feed the multibillion dollar diet industry.

Fat has been called a feminist issue: William Leith’s unblinking look at the physical consequences and psychological pain of being an overweight man charts fascinating new territory for everyone who has ever had a craving or counted a calorie. The Hungry Years is a story of food, fat, and addiction that is both funny and heartwrenching.
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7. All I Want Is You
(2006)
Martina Reilly

Poppy Furlong has the dream life - gorgeous home, loving husband and a five-year-old son she adores. Then overnight she loses it all - her home, gym membership, expensive car, regular trips to the beauty salon - because her husband's business partner has disappeared with the company profits. As she attempts to rebuild her family, Poppy leaves Dublin for the suburbs. There she acquires a mother-in-law from hell, a father she hardly knows, a new job, a new friend, a better insight into parenting, and a new life. Will it match up to the old one? Or might it just be better?
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8. The Double Life of Anna Day
(2006)
Louise Candlish

Anna Day is in love with Charlie,an architect, but Charlie is scared to introduce Anna to his mother Meredith , because she lost her husband in a car accident a year ago and is now selfcentred. She also wrecked the relationship of Charlie's brother Leo.Meredith is rich and snobbish and used to get things her way. When Charlie went away for 2 months on business Anna decided to pay his mother a visit not mentioning her friendship with Charlie. She always visits Meredith with someone who knows her well and is never alone with her. Anna was previously married to Paul but she discovered it was a mistake and divorced him.After a few visits to Meredith Anna felt at ease talking to her and they talked mainly about art . Anna does art workon a part time basis and Meredith ensures her that her work is good and that she must continue doing it on a broader scale. Meredit invited Anna to her 60th birthday by way of a classy invitation saying also that she wants to introduce Charlie to her. Charlie in the meantime let his mother know that he wants her to meet someone special. At his mother's party he introduced the girl Ashley to her whom he met on his travel while Anna is watching unnoticed. He is shocked to see Anna. After they talked in private Charlie is furious .because he is found out. The next day when visiting he tried to manoeuvre his way out of the situation and tried to put the blame on Anna, but she saw him for what he is ;a coward and a cheat., and sent him on his way. It dawned on Anna that it was never Meredith who was the one who put Charlie off from taking her to his home to meet his mother but it was Charlie who did not want to take her home.
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9. Take Someone Like Me
(2007)
Jayne Buxton

Written by a spokesperson in the field of work-life balance, this struggling with juggling comedy is about a modern mother of three who has had enough. When she meets Daniel, attractive, passionate and spontaneous, she knows the turning point has come.
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10. My Name Is Salma
(2007)
Fadia Faqir

In her village of Hima in the Levant, Salma, a young goat-herd, has violated the code of her Bedouin tribe by becoming pregnant before marriage. To restore their honour, the villagers set out to kill her. Now a runaway from the men of her tribe, Salma's days playing the pipe for her goats and swimming in the spring are over. She is placed in prison for her own protection, and to the sound of her deafening screams, her newborn baby is taken away. After several years, when it seems the men have given up on their chase, she moves to England to seek asylum. So begins her new life in the permissive West. In the middle of the most English of English towns, Exeter, she learns good manners from her ancient landlady, and strives to have a social life at the local pub. But it is with the help of Parvin, a feisty Pakistani girl on the run from an arranged marriage, that Salma is finally able to forge a new identity. Living by her 'Immigrant Survival Guide', she settles down with an Englishman. But deep in her heart the cries of her baby daughter still echo. When she can no longer bear them, she decides to go back to her village to find her. It is a journey that will change everything. Fadia Faqir's portrait of the fractured lives of immigrants caught up in a painful yet exhilarating cross-cultural encounter is both heartbreaking and humorous. It is a story that will leave no-one unmoved.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11. Ready or Not
(2006)
Chris Manby
In London, Heidi met Ed Gordon when she had emergency dental need and her dentist was away. They went out on a first date that was perfect and continued to see one another until he proposed on Valentine's Day in Paris. He is the man of her dreams.

However, over the next few months as Heidi and Ed prepare to say I do, she begins to have doubts mostly caused by his behavior when he is with his rugby mates. Heidi begins to wonder if he is her soul mate when he comes back to their flat telling her he lost his key, unaware that he lost his clothing too as he is naked. Adding to her growing doubts is that her first love Steven Gabriel is back and making it clear he desires her. Heidi considers whether she is ready to marry and to whom or not?

This is an enjoyable amusing contemporary romance that sub- genre fans will appreciate as Heidi seems poised as her world goes out of control. She, her fiancé, and her former lover are fully developed characters while his mates augment the growing concerns that have Heidi reconsidering her commitment. Though the ending is too overwhelming with "confessions", Chris Manby provides a fun modern day English romance.
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12. Truth and Beauty: A Friendship
(2004)
Ann Patchett

What happens when the person who is your family is someone you aren't bound to by blood? What happens when that person is not your lover, but your best friend? In her frank and startlingly intimate first work of nonfiction, Truth & Beauty, Ann Patchett shines light on the little-explored world of women's friendships and shows us what it means to stand together.

Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and after enrolling in the Iowa Writer's Workshop began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In her critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy wrote about the first half of her life. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn't Lucy's life or Ann's life but the parts of their lives they shared together. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans 20 years, from the long cold winters of the Midwest to surgical wards to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined.

This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty and about being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.
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13. Stories We Could Tell
(2005)
Tony Parsons

This is the UK of the summer of 1977 - in the midst of the Silver Jubilee celebrations, a generation are trying to grow up and discovering the limits of freedom. It is 16th August 1977 - the night Elvis died - and for the heroes of STORIES WE COULD TELL, this night is where their adult lives begin. Terry has returned from Berlin glowing in the light of his friendship with ageing rock star Dag Wood, the only man to be booed off stage at Woodstock. But when Dag turns up in London, he sets his sights on a photographer called Misty, the young woman who Terry plans to have children with. Will Terry's relationship survive the night? Ray is the only writer on The Paper who refuses to cut his hair and stop wearing flares. He still believes in peace, love and the Beatles. But John Lennon is in town for one night, en route to Yoko and Japan, and Ray believes that if he can interview the reclusive Beatle, he can save his job. Can John Lennon really change a young man's life? And Leon has annoyed the group of fans you do not want to annoy - the Dagenham Dogs, a bunch of hooligans who follow a group called the Sewer Rats, who have just been given a right royal slagging by young Leon. Hiding out in a disco called the Goldmine, Leon meets the girl of his dreams. Will true love find Leon before the Dagenham Dogs?
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14. Cracks in My Foundation: Bags, Trips, Make-up Tips, Charity, Glory, And the Darker Side of the Story
(2005)
Marian Keyes

Go further under the covers and stay in bed a little longer with Marian Keyes in this winning follow-up to her smash essay collection, Under the Duvet. Written in the witty, forthright style that has earned her legions of devoted readers, Cracks in My Foundation offers an even deeper and more candid look into this beloved author's mind and heart, exploring such universal themes as friends and family, home, glamour and beauty, children, travel, and more. Marian's hilarious and thoughtful take on life makes her readers feel they are reading a friend, not just an author.

Marian continues to entertain with her reports from the trenches, and throws in some original short fiction as well. Whether it's visiting Siberia, breaking it off with an old hairdresser, shopping (of course!), turning forty, living with her beloved husband, Himself (a man beyond description), or musing on the F word (feminism), Marian shares the joys, passions, and sorrows of her world and helps us feel good about our own. So grab a latte and a pillow and get ready to laugh your slippers off!
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15. Falling for You
(2003)
Jill Mansell

After a romantic encounter under the cover of darkness, former ugly duckling Maddy Harvey is shocked to discover in daylight that her potential Prince Charming is a totally unsuitable ghost from the past.
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16. Life's Like That - Scenes from Malaysian Life by Lydia Teh
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17. Remember Me?
(2008)
Sophie Kinsella

When twenty-eight-year-old Lexi Smart wakes up in a London hospital, she's in for a big surprise. Her teeth are perfect. Her body is toned. Her handbag is Vuitton. Having survived a car accident—in a Mercedes no less—Lexi has lost a big chunk of her memory, three years to be exact, and she's about to find out just how much things have changed.

Somehow Lexi went from a twenty-five-year-old working girl to a corporate big shot with a sleek new loft, a personal assistant, a carb-free diet, and a set of glamorous new friends. And who is this gorgeous husband—who also happens to be a multimillionaire? With her mind still stuck three years in reverse, Lexi greets this brave new world determined to be the person she…well, seems to be. That is, until an adorably disheveled architect drops the biggest bombshell of all.

Suddenly Lexi is scrambling to catch her balance. Her new life, it turns out, comes complete with secrets, schemes, and intrigue. How on earth did all this happen? Will she ever remember? And what will happen when she does?
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18. Thanks for the Memories
(2008)
Cecelia Ahern

How can you know someone you've never met? Joyce Conway leaves hospital after recovering from a terrible accident. Having faced a near-death experience, she is suddenly awakened to the stark reality of her futile marriage, and vows to start afresh -- separating from husband Conor and moving back in with her dad. Justin Hitchcock arrives in Dublin to give a guest lecture. Recently divorced and living near his daughter Bea, but far from his Chicago home, he's lonely and restless. When beautiful doctor Sarah persuades him to give blood, he nonchalantly accepts, hoping he'll at least get a date with her. Then one rainy evening, Joyce and Justin cross paths in the strangest of circumstances. They have no idea that their fates are more entangled than they could ever have imagined !

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19. Nineteen Minutes
(2007)
Jodi Picoult

In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five.... In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it.

In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge.

Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens -- until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.
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20. The Tenth Circle
(2006)
Jodi Picoult

Trixie Stone is fourteen years old and in love for the first time. She's also the light of her father's life -- a straight-A student; a freshman in high school who is pretty and popular; a girl who's always looked up to Daniel Stone as a hero. Until, that is, her world is turned upside down with a single act of violence. . . and suddenly everything Trixie has believed about her family -- and herself -- seems to be a lie.

For fifteen years, Daniel Stone has been an even-tempered, mild-mannered man: a stay-at-home dad to Trixie and a husband who has put his own career as a comic book artist behind that of his wife, Laura, who teaches Dante's Inferno at a local college. But years ago, he was completely different: growing up as the only white boy in an Eskimo village, he was teased mercilessly for the color of his skin. He learned to fight back: stealing, drinking, robbing, and cheating his way out of the Alaskan bush. To become part of a family, he reinvented himself, channeling his rage onto the page and burying his past completely . . . until now. Could the young boy who once made Trixie's face fill with light when he came to the door have been the one to end her childhood forever? She says that he is, and that is all it takes to make Daniel, a man with a history he has hidden even from his family, venture to hell and back in order to protect his daughter.

The Tenth Circle looks at that delicate moment when a child learns that her parents don't know all of the answers and when being a good parent means letting go of your child. It asks whether you can reinvent yourself in the course of a lifetime or if your mistakes are carried forever -- if life is, as in any good comic book, a struggle to control good and evil, or if good and evil control you.
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21. Mahathir Mohamad an illustrated biography by E.Yu
22. Mat Som by Lat
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23. Mercy
(1996)
Jodi Picoult

Cameron McDonald has spent his life guided by duty. As the police chief of a small Massachusetts town that has been home to generations of his Scottish clan, he is bound to the town's residents by blood and honor. Yet when his cousin Jamie arrives at the police station with the body of his wife and the bald confession that he has killed her, Cam immediately places him under arrest. The situation isn't as clear to Cam's wife, Allie. While she is devoted to her husband, she finds herself siding against Cam, seduced by the picture Jamie paints of a man so in love with a woman that he'd grant all her wishes - even the one that meant taking her life. Into this charged atmosphere drifts Mia, a new assistant at Allie's florist shop, for whom Cam feels an instant and inexplicable attraction. While he aids the prosecution in preparing the case against Jamie, who killed his terminally ill wife out of mercy, Cam finds himself betraying his own wife.
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24. A Walk to Remember
(1999)
Nicholas Sparks

There was a time when the world was sweeter...and something happened to a seventeen-year-old boy that would change his life forever.

It was 1958, and Landon had already dated a girl or two. He even claimed to have been in love. Certainly the last person he thought he would fall for was Jamie Sullivan, daughter of the town's Baptist minister. A quiet girl who carried a Bible with her schoolbooks, Jamie seemed content living in a world apart from the other teens. She took care of her widowed father, rescued hurt animals, and volunteered at the local orphanage.

Landon would never have dreamed of asking her out, but a twist of fate threw them together when he found himself without a partner for the school dance. In the months that followed, Landon discovered truths that most people take a lifetime to learn - about the joy of giving, the pain of loss and, most of all, the transforming nature of love. Being with Jamie would show him the depths of the human heart and lead him to a decision so stunning it would send him irrevocably on the road to manhood...
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25. Vanishing Acts
(2005)
Jodi Picoult

Delia Hopkins has led a charmed life. Raised in rural New Hampshire by her widowed father, Andrew, she now has a young daughter, a handsome fiancé, and her own search-and-rescue bloodhound, which she uses to find missing persons. But as Delia plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can't recall. And then a policeman knocks on her door, revealing a secret that changes the world as she knows it.

In shock and confusion, Delia must sift through the truth -- even when it jeopardizes her life and the lives of those she loves. What happens when you learn you are not who you thought you were? When the people you've loved and trusted suddenly change before your eyes? When getting your deepest wish means giving up what you've always taken for granted? Vanishing Acts explores how life -- as we know it -- might not turn out the way we imagined; how doing the right thing could mean doing the wrong thing; how the memory we thought had vanished could return as a threat. Once again, Jodi Picoult handles a difficult and timely topic with understanding, insight, and compassion.
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26. The Pact
(1998)
Jodi Picoult

For eighteen years the Hartes and the Golds have lived next door to each other, sharing everything from Chinese food to chicken pox to carpool duty - they've grown so close it seems they have always been a part of each other's lives. Parents and children alike have been best friends - so it's no surprise that in high school Chris and Emily's friendship blossoms into something more. They've been soul mates since they were born. So when midnight calls from the hospital come in, no one is ready for the appalling truth: Emily is dead at seventeen from a gunshot wound to the head. There's a single unspent bullet in the gun that Chris took from his father's cabinet - a bullet that Chris tells police he intended for himself. But a local detective has doubts about the suicide pact that Chris has described. As its chapters unfold, alternating between an idyllic past and an unthinkable present, "The Pact" paints an indelible portrait of families in anguish...culminating in an astonishingly suspenseful courtroom drama as Chris finds himself on trial for murder.
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27. Life is an Open Secret - You, Me & We (2008) Zabrina A. Bakar
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28. Be Careful What You Wish For
(2006)
Alexandra Potter

'I wish I could get a seat on the tube...I hadn't eaten that entire bag of Maltesers...I could meet a man whose hobbies include washing up and monogamy...' Heather Hamilton is always wishing for things. Not just big stuff - like world peace or for a date with Brad Pitt - but little, everyday wishes, made without thinking. With her luck, she knows they'll never come true...Until one day she buys some heather from a gypsy. Suddenly the bad hair days stop; a handsome American answers her ad for a housemate; and she starts seeing James - The Perfect Man who sends her flowers, excels in the bedroom, and isn't afraid to say 'I love you'...But are these wishes-come-true a blessing or a curse? And is there such a thing as too much foreplay?
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29. Baby Proof
(2006)
Emily Giffin

Claudia and Ben seem to be the perfect couple. Ever since their first date, when they discovered that neither saw children in their future, the path of their relationship seems destined to succeed. They envisage a life filled with freedom, possibility and exploration. Claudia and Ben are together because they want to be, not because children are caging them with eighteen years of obligation. But things don't always stay the same. Ben's best friend and his wife get pregnant, and suddenly Ben changes his mind. He does want children after all. This is the story of a couple at a crossroads - and a woman who must decide what she wants most in life. BABY PROOF explores searing emotional consequences and impossible dilemmas with sensitivity and wit, depth and lashings of heart.
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30. Certain Girls
(The second book in the Cannie Shapiro series)
(2008)
Jennifer Weiner

It's been almost thirteen years since we last saw Cannie Shapiro, the heroine of Good in Bed, whose journey towards happy-ever-after made millions of women the world over laugh, cry and recognise themselves. The last decade of Cannie's life has brought some surprises. Her life story, in fictional form, became an unexpected bestseller, and Cannie has since retreated from fame's fallout, writing science-fiction under a pen name and praying that all her daughter inherited from her father, Cannie's ex-boyfriend Bruce Guberman, are her curls and her eye-colour, and not his predilection for smoking pot. Meanwhile Cannie's best friend, Samantha, is looking for love in all the wrong places, and Cannie's husband, Peter, has decided that he'd like to have a baby, and the family's first choice for a surrogate is none other than Cannie's flamboyant kid sister ...
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31. Confessions Of A Shopaholic
(The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic)
(The first book in the Shopaholic series)
(2000)

Sophie Kinsella

Meet Rebecca Bloomwood.

She's a journalist. She spends her working life telling others how to manage their money. She spends her leisure time...shopping.

Retail therapy is the answer to all her problems. She knows she should stop, but she can't. She tries Cutting Back, she tries Making More Money. But neither seems to work. The stories she concocts become more and more fantastic as she tries to untangle her increasingly dire financial difficulties. Her only comfort is to buy herself something - just a little something...

Can Becky ever escape from this dream world, find true love, and regain the use of her Switch card?

The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic...

The perfect pick me up for when it's all hanging in the (bank) balance.
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32. Goodnight, Beautiful
(2008)
Dorothy Koomson

Nova Kumalisi would do anything for her closest friend, Mal Wacken. She owes him her life. So, when he asked her to be the surrogate mother for him and his wife, in spite of her fears about how it would alter their friendship, Nova agreed. Eight years later, Nova is bringing up their son alone, and she and Mal don't speak. Months into the pregnancy, Mal's wife changed her mind about the surrogacy agreement. Already suspicious of how close Nova and Mal were, Stephanie realised her strained marriage was in serious trouble when she found a text from her husband to Nova, saying, 'Goodnight, Beautiful'. She asked Mal to cut all ties with his closest friend and unborn child. Now, seven-year-old Leo is critically ill and Nova, despite her anger and hurt, wants Mal to have the chance to know his son before it's too late. Will it take a tragedy to remind them how much they mean to each other?

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33. The Other Woman
(2004)
Jane Green

"There were three of us in the marriage." Ellie can't push Princess Diana's infamous words out of her mind, except Ellie isn't dealing with a mistress, but with a matriach, and she can't decide which is worse... The Coopers were everything Ellie had always wanted. A large, loving family, parents Linda and Michael doted on their three children, and when Ellie married Dan, their eldest son, she was thrilled when they welcomed her in and treated her as one of their own. But Linda, who started off as the perfect mother quickly turns into the mother-in-law from hell, and once Dan and Ellie returns from their honeymoon and the Coopers' dysfunctions start to reveal themselves, Ellie wonders whether she's made a terrible mistake. Constant rows with her husband and a simmering fury with her new family, the arrival of baby Tom should ease Ellie's insecurities, but instead sets off a chain of events that threatens everything Ellie has always dreamed of.
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34. The Chocolate Run
(2004)
Dorothy Koomson

Amber Salpone thinks in chocolate - talk to her for three minutes and she'll tell you what kind of chocolate you'd be. In fact, most days, if she was asked to choose between chocolate and relationships, there'd be no contest. At least chocolate has never let her down. Unlike her family. Growing up in the Salpone household has taught Amber to avoid conflict - and love - at all costs. So, when she does the unthinkable and has a one-night stand with womaniser Greg Walterson, her uncomplicated, chocolate-flavoured life goes into meltdown. Especially when Greg announces she's the love of his life - and Amber finds it hard enough to decide if she wants plain or Fruit & Nut ...Meanwhile, her best friend, Jen, seems to be launching a bid to become Bitch Of The Year and Amber's family are making unreasonable demands. Amber has two choices: to deal with her past and the people around her, or to go on a chocolate run and keep on running.
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35. Does My Head Look Big in This?
(2006)
Randa Abdel-Fattah

Sixteen-year-old Amal makes the decision to start wearing the hijab full- time and everyone has a reaction. Her parents, her teachers, her friends, people on the street. But she stands by her decision to embrace her faith and all that it is, even if it does make her a little different from everyone else. Can she handle the taunts of "nappy head," the prejudice of her classmates, and still attract the cutest boy in school? Brilliantly funny and poignant, Randa Abdel-Fattah's debut novel will strike a chord in all teenage readers, no matter what their beliefs.
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36. Everyone Worth Knowing
(2005)
Lauren Weisberger

Bette Robinson is a twentysomething Emory graduate who shunned her parents' hippie ideals in favor of a high-paying yet excruciatingly boring job at a prestigious investment bank. One day, after a particularly condescending exchange with her boss (who sends her daily inspirational e-mails), Bette walks out on her job in a huff. After a few weeks of sleeping late, watching Dr. Phil and entertaining her dog Millington, Bette's uncle scores her a job at an up-and-coming public relations firm, where her entire job seems to revolve around staying out late partying and providing fodder for clandestine gossip columns. What follows is one episode after another of Bette climbing up the social ladder at the expense of her friends, family, and the one guy who actually seems worth pursuing.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 37. Girl with a One Track Mind
(2006)
Abby Lee