Foss, M: Scribes

Maureen Foss's off-beat and darkly funny third novel begins when four quirky and mismatched women answer an ad to join a writing group. Unlikely friendships and wild adventures ensue as their lives start to unravel around them.

Bunny, the wife of a calculating, cheating husband, is writing a novel about the best way to carry out spousal disposal and get away with it. Mariah, a closet lesbian, is planning to make a fortune by marketing her romance novels when her home is suddenly invaded by her mother and her mother's blaspheming parrot. The sentimental poet, Sari, makes her living as a funeral home cosmetician, but when her husband kidnaps their son and runs off for a new life without her, quiet, introverted Sari transforms into a wildcat. As the gardening, recipe and etiquette columnist for the local paper, Jemima blends her somewhat unorthodox recipes with her motherly advice. But she suffers a bad case of writer's block when her husband Joe, a wheelchair-user, has a stroke and falls face-first into her experimental lima bean casserole.

The women's lives intertwine; good scotch is consumed, lovers come and go and almost everything around them changes, but writing is the glue that holds their friendships fast.