Cirrus@Austlit

'Julie Catt misspent her youth in Columbia, Missouri lining up tequila shots and winning wet T-shirt competitions. So maybe it wasn't such a stretch to think that twenty years on, mother to six kids from four different paternity arrangements, she'd be sobbing to a therapist about her irrepressible white-trash heritage. Or that her birth parents would turn up, trailing a whole new family. Or even that she'd be living on the other side of the world, having followed her hot butch Australian girlfriend to Sydney.

'But happily married? With a respectable profession? That would be weird...

'Normal is a left-of centre memoir in the mould of Running with Scissors: a funny, insightful, moving and relentlessly frank account of a messy and richly lived life. A complete delight to read, it is a tribute and a reassurance to people in unconventional families everywhere - which, of course, means most of us.' (From the publisher's website.)

'When Lucy's husband of eighteen years runs out on her, she'll do anything to win him back. Including climbing out of her bedroom window at one in the morning wearing her daughter's mini skirt.

'Jasper has left Lucy for her best friend, the chic and thin interior decorator Renee. To make matters worse, her teenage daughter Tally, blames her Mum. "Dad left because you've let yourself go, you're overweight and you nagged him. No wonder he buggered off."

'While Tally is busy trying to find a loophole in her birth certificate so she can put herself up for adoption, Lucy tries to accept that a child is for life and not just for Christmas. Although a signed-up member of Underachievers Anonymous, in Lucy's quest to win back her husband she learns to be a surf life saver, loses weight and gets a job. She also falls in lust, finding herself torn between an older and a much younger man.But it's not until Lucy makes the Freudian discovery that her toy boy is also dating her daughter - and that he's been paid to do so by her conniving ex as ammunition for a custody battle, that she finally learns to stand on her own two stilettos.' (Publisher's blurb)