Jeanne Ray – författare

With a ringing phone, Jeanne Ray’s charming and amusing new novel gets off to a rollicking start that never lets up. Not for a minute. On the other end of the phone is Caroline’s daughter, Kay, a public defender like her father, sobbing at the improbably good news that the richest, most eligible boy in Raleigh, North Carolina, has asked her to marry him. While Caroline and Tom are trying to digest this, the other phone, the “children’s line,” rings; it is Caroline’s sister, Taffy, hysterical over her husband’s decision to leave her for a woman two years younger than her daughter. Soon Taffy is wending her way up from Atlanta to seek solace in her sister’s home, even though the two have been separated by more than just geography for the past forty years. With her is her little dog, Stamp, who has a penchant for biting ankles and stealing hearts. Tom and Caroline quickly realize that the wedding their future son-in-law’s family is envisioning for nine-hundred-plus guests is to be their fiscal responsibility. To top it all off, the foundation of their home is in danger of collapsing and their contractor and his crew have all but moved in. It’s a thundering whirlwind of emotion that finally boils down to: Who is in love with whom? and Who’s going to get the next dance? Wise, funny, and impossible to put down, Step-Ball-Change is peopled with characters you feel you have known your whole life. It’s the kind of book that you can’t bear to see end.

Ruth loves to bake cakes. When she is alone, she dreams up variations on recipes. When she meditates, she imagines herself in the warm, comforting center of a gigantic bundt cake. If there is a crisis, she bakes a cake; if there is a reason to celebrate, she bakes a cake. Ruth sees it as an outward manifestation of an inner need to nurture her family—which is a good thing, because all of a sudden that family is rapidly expanding. First, her mother moves in after robbers kick in her front door in broad daylight. Then Ruth’s father, a lounge singer, who she’s seen only occasionally throughout her life, shatters both wrists and, having nowhere else to go, moves in, too. Her mother and father just happen to hate each other with a deep and poisonous emotion reserved only for life-long enemies. Oh, yes indeed!Add to this mix two teenagers, a gainfully employed husband who is suddenly without a job, and a physical therapist with the instincts of a Cheryl Richardson and you’ve got a delightful and amusing concoction that comes with its own delicious icing.One of Jeanne Ray’s specialties is giving us believable, totally likable characters, engaged in the large and small dramas and amusements of life. Eat Cake is whimsical, warm, and satisfying. Eat Cake is Jeanne Ray at her best. Pull up a chair and eat cake!

A deliciously funny and wickedly sexy novel of love found (finally!) and love threatened (inevitably) by the families who claim to love us best. Romeo Cacciamani and Julie Roseman are rival florists in Boston, whose families have hated each other for as long as anyone can remember (what they can''t remember is why). When these two vital, lonely people see each other across a crowded lobby at a small business owners'' seminar, an intense attraction blooms that neither tries to squelch. They''re not sure what fate has in store for them, but they''re not about to let something as silly as a generations-long feud stand in the way of finding out. That is, not until Romeo''s octogenarian mother, Julie''s meddling ex-husband, and a cast of grown Cacciamani and Roseman children begin to intervene with a passionate hatred that matches their newly found love, stroke for stroke. Think Montagues and Capulets, think wise and witty and thoroughly modern. Julie and Romeo is a love story for the ages. All ages.From the Hardcover edition.

The novel opens as Caroline, a local dance teacher, sits down to dinner with her husband, Tom, and the telephone rings twice in quick succession: first with the weeping of her daughter, Shaye, and secondly with the rather more ominous sound of her distraught sister, Taffy. It turns out that Shaye is weeping because she has just been proposed to (by a man of whom Caroline and Tom don't wholly approve), while Taffy is weeping because her husband has just left her. Divorce, marriage, love and fidelity are the themes of this heartwarming family romance. At its core is the solid foundation of Caroline's long marriage to Tom and her desire to see everyone around her happy. As is often the case, it takes several twists and turns to resolve the many repercussions of both announcements involving family gatherings, preparations for the wedding - and quite a lot of dance.

'For never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.' Shakespeare might have seen his young star-cross'd lovers as a tragic pair, but 400 years later Jeanne Ray's Julie and Romeo are light-hearted, funny and sixty-something. Julie Roseman, a divorcee, and Romeo Cacciamani, a widower, own rival flower shops in Boston. They don't know what started the family feud generations before, but they have never questioned it. Until the fateful day when they meet at a business conference and inexplicably find themselves falling in love. But the path of true love never did run smooth, and with Romeo's feisty mother and a pack of fierce children coming between them, it looks like Julie and Romeo's tale will not end happily - or will it?

'A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don't each the whole cake. You don't eat a cake every day of your life. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what's served on the happiest days of your life. This is the story of how my life was saved by cake . . .' Feisty middle-aged housewife Ruth Hopson's life comes crashing down around her when her hospital administrator husband is made redundant. As the family's financial problems begin to mount, Ruth must also cope with her sulky teenage daughter and warring elderly parents. As she tries to keep the peace in this eccentric, disfunctional household, Ruth's only solace comes from baking cakes. But what begins as a distraction and grows into an obsession just might provide an ingenious solution to the family's dilemmas.

Julie Roseman and Romeo Cacciamani know a thing or two about good fortune. For generations, their families were rival florists and bitter enemies. Then Julie and Romeo met by chance, just as each became single again. Even more miraculous, they fell in love. Three years later, Julie and Romeo are still blissfully happy. They don''t often get a quiet moment alone, and rarely manage a night -- quiet or otherwise -- in the same bed, but Julie feels blessed by what they do have: true love, wonderful jobs, and houses packed to the rafters with family. Romeo''s ninety-three-year-old mother, his son Alan, Alan''s wife and their three children live with him; Julie''s daughter Sandy and her family -- including Sandy''s Willy Wonka-obsessed daughter, Sarah, and their cat -- live with her. The odds of Julie and Romeo getting a few days of peace together seem about as likely as winning the lottery. But their wish comes true -- with a twist -- when an injury puts Romeo flat on his back in Julie''s room. Spending days in bed may sound heavenly, but with Romeo on pain pills, initially as comatose as Juliet in her tomb, the reality is less romantic. Then Julie''s other daughter, Nora, drops her own crisis on her mother''s doorstep. Now Julie has to figure out how to run two flower shops, take care of an ever-expanding household, nurse her beloved Romeo back to health, tackle Sarah''s fixation with lottery tickets, and keep her daughters from regressing into full-scale teenage bickering. And Lady Luck has one more surprise in store.... Wonderfully witty and unerringly wise, Julie and Romeo Get Lucky is a smart, heartwarming story of timeless love and family loyalty, and a reminder that if you suddenly get everything you ever wished for, the only thing to do is live happily ever after.