A unique celebration of gardening written by an award-winning novelist Despite the fact that she has only six square metres of grubby urban soil and a few pots, Charlotte Mendelson has a secret life. She is an extreme gardener, an obsessive, an addict. And like all addicts, she wants to spread the joy. br Beginning with Late Winter, Charlotte takes the reader through her gardening year, via Wasting Money Wisely (the lure of the seed packet), Thirty-Three Alternatives to Lettuce (the greatest salads don't need bacon or croutons), Tree Envy (dreams of owning a plum tree), and Fantasy (gardening is an unfulfilled fantasy, never disappointing and always a source o ..

By all outward appearances, the Rubins are the perfect family: brilliant, successful, enviably close-knit. Then an event of great joy and celebration -- the marriage of the eldest son -- urns to chaos when the groom jilts his bride and runs off with a married woman. It's a shock to everyone in their small Jewish community, most of all to matriarch Claudia, a successful rabbi. In the wake of this one defiant act, the floodgates to a ruinous wave of gossip are opened, and the secrets that the Rubins have been keeping from one another begin to spill forth. All four adult Rubin children and their parents ultimately must come to terms with their own inner desires and ..

THE TIMES (UK) NOVEL OF THE YEAR br Named A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by the Guardian, the Telegraph, and the Sunday Times (UK) Charlotte Mendelson's The Exhibitionist is a "furiously funny" novel (Sunday Express , UK) about a marriage between two artists, Lucia and Ray, which begins to unravel over the course of one weekend. Meet the Hanrahan family, gathering for a momentous weekend as famous artist and notorious egoist Ray Hanrahan prepares for a new exhibition of his art-the first in many decades-and one he is sure will burnish his reputation for good. His three children will be there: eldest daughter Leah, always her father's biggest champion; son Pat ..