Housemoms

How fast can charity fundraiser CeCe Barclay’s unimpeachable society life come tumbling down? One minute she’s speaking before Chicago’s glitterati. The next, her financier husband is wanted for embezzlement. Her assets seized and her fall mortifyingly public, CeCe grasps for refuge―and employment―as a sorority housemom at Eli Whitney University, her daughter Hayden’s alma mater. Tasked with preparing a stately―but in CeCe’s estimation shabby―house for rush, CeCe isn’t the only one navigating a new life. Janelle Smith’s last experience as a housemother was at a Jersey strip club, where she witnessed a mob hit. To keep her safe until trial, WITSEC finds her a new identity and a housemom position on Eli Whitney’s sorority row, where Janelle’s conflict mediation and tolerance for high estrogen levels make her a star employee. For Hayden, a barista at a hopelessly hip off-campus café, the goal is to flee everything Barclay: the money, the scandals, and the exasperating family nonsense. What next? Though CeCe’s not ready to sell her Chanel bag, she’s open to reinvention. Hayden might even admit she needs help in her new independent life. And Janelle’s due for a personal triumph. But big challenges loom between the alabaster columns of Eli Whitney, unexpected and dicey enough to bring them all together―if only to keep them from falling completely apart. Jen Lancaster is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Here I Go Again and The Gatekeepers and the nonfiction works Welcome to the United States of Anxiety; Bitter Is the New Black; The Tao of Martha; Such a Pretty Fat; Bright Lights, Big Ass; Stories I’d Tell in Bars; Jeneration X; My Fair Lazy; Pretty in Plaid; and I Regret Nothing, which was named an Amazon Bes...