Maggie Alderson was born in London, brought up in Staffordshire and educated at the University of St Andrews. She has worked on nine magazines - editing four of them, including British ELLE - and has been going to fashion shows for 20 years. She is currently a fashion columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald, for which she covers the fashion shows in Milan and Paris twice a year.

Her previous novels, Pants on Fire and Mad About the Boy, were bestsellers in Australia and the UK, and she was a co-editor of the charity anthology Big Night Out, in aid of War Child. She has also published two collections of non-fiction: Shoe Money and Handbag Heaven. She is married and has a daughter and 12 pairs of Prada shoes. 'At last we've found her, the female Seinfeld. Warm, witty, wise and well-dressed, Alderson is the haute couture of humour.' - Kathy Lette

Amelia Bradlow seems to have everything she needs to be happy - a handsome husband, a beautiful home, money, good looks and a glamour job. Everything, that is, except the thing she wants most - a baby.

Ed, her husband, is funny, affectionate and sophisticated but simply not interested in parenthood. He likes his life neat and tidy. And he likes having a wife who attends solely to his needs.

As she approaches 37, Amelia is faced with a life-changing decision, aided and abetted by Kiki, her hopelessly disorganised but ridiculously rich friend. Should Amelia stay in her nearly happy marriage, or expose herself to the vagaries of single life and the distant possibility of meeting someone who wants to start a family?

Maggie Alderson brings her deep understanding of the human heart to this new novel about the compromises we make in life, and about those rare moments of grace when we decide to risk everything for the chance to be truly, madly and deeply happy.