Elise Juska Books In Order

Novels

  1. Getting Over Jack Wagner (2003)
  2. The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (2004)
  3. One for Sorrow, Two for Joy (2007)
  4. The Blessings (2014)
  5. If We Had Known (2018)

Omnibus

  1. Cold Feet (2005)

Novels Book Covers

Omnibus Book Covers

Elise Juska Books Overview

Getting Over Jack Wagner

Where are all the real rock stars? Eliza is looking to date a rock star though she uses the term loosely. None of her boyfriends have been famous. Most have unbearable habits and overbearing mothers. A few only played show tunes. Still, they’re intense. Pierced. Tragically stubbled. With a predilection for dressing in black. Eliza finds them deep in theory, anyway. But in reality, none comes close to the object of her original rock star crush: actor/crooner Jack Wagner. When her latest catch turns out be another mama’s boy, Eliza begins to realize love is nothing like her favorite ’80s song. Is she ready to face the music? Just as Eliza is planning her next move, she’s dealt an emotional triple whammy involving her sister, her best friend, and a horrific blind date. That’s when she realizes that only by taking a good look at her past and her tape collection will she ever be able to hear a different kind of song and live a different kind of life.

The Hazards of Sleeping Alone

With her free spirited daughter away at college and her ‘hip’ ex husband living across the country, Charlotte has grown used to being alone. For the most part, she prefers it. She relies on familiar routines: manicures, grocery shopping, game shows. But at night, no matter how hard she tries and in spite of the Dream Machine her daughter Emily sent her she can’t stop her logical mind from running wild imagining burglars, strange noises, and all manner of trouble that might befall her fearless daughter.

Having just graduated from Wesleyan with a pierced tongue and an arsenal of opinions, Emily has always been passionate about her beliefs from mindfulness to vegetarianism to her new live in boyfriend. Though Charlotte rarely understands her, she’s learned to keep her doubts to herself. But when Emily and the new boyfriend arrive for a weekend visit, secrets are revealed that compel Charlotte to take a stand. Forced to examine her own life choices, she’s about to learn she can’t control everything. What she can do is open her heart to new possibilities, and to the fact that headstrong Emily might have a thing or two to teach them all.

One for Sorrow, Two for Joy

For two quietly unhappy years, linguist Claire Gallagher has been living deep in the New Hampshire woods, enduring a polite but strained marriage to a highly respected scientist. Once a determined overachiever and academic star in her own right, she now spends her days avoiding her stalled dissertation and creating EZ crossword puzzles. But for all Claire’s knowledge of words and their meanings, the meaning in her own life eludes her. One bleak morning in winter, she announces that she’s leaving. By nightfall, at the urging of her younger sister Noelle, Claire finds herself heading to the last place she thought she would ever go: Ireland the birthplace of her abrasive, chronically ill mother and the country Noelle, a college dropout, now calls home. In a small town on the Irish coast, Claire’s struggle to move ahead with her life takes her deep into the puzzles of her past in a world in which there are no simple answers, and the only questions that matter are those of the heart.

Cold Feet

Say ‘I do’ to five surprising stories of women grappling with love and marriage and whether to walk down the aisle or run away. In Elise Juska’s ‘Perfect Weather for Driving,’ Megan and Joel’s sunset fender bender makes for a great drunken story at his friend’s wedding, but the reality is hardly romantic. Stuck in a New England hotel waiting for the verdict on their Volvo, the two are forced to take stock of their own damaged relationship and whether it’s too late to fix it. In Tara McCarthy’s ‘Losing California,’ engaged surfer Alison is convinced that Michael Madsen a member of her favorite band is her soul mate. Unfortunately, he’s not her fianc . So Alison flies to Nova Scotia, where Michael lives, because she’s either right or she’s wrong and she better find out before the wedding. The bride to be in Pamela Ribon’s ‘Sara King Goes Bad’ has always done the right thing but decides it’s important to know what it feels like to be reckless for once. And so two weeks before her wedding, she indulges in an unforgettable night of sex, drugs, and petty crime. In Heather Swain’s ‘The Happiest Day of Your Life,’ Annie and Ben plan a simple ceremony at an apple orchard. But when Annie loses perspective and everything that can go wrong does she’s forced to rethink why she wanted a wedding in the first place. The ‘Emily & Jules’ of Lisa Tucker’s story are two lonely people who meet on an online bulletin board for agoraphobics. But when Emily is invited to her estranged brother’s wedding and it’s clear across the country both she and Jules may be forced to change their ways. Will any of these hero*ines get to the church on time? Cozy up with Cold Feet and find out.

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