Whenever Helen Croydon mentions that marriage and kids just aren't on her radar, everyone tells her that she'll become 'one of those old ladies with lots of cats'. But what, she asks, is so wrong with that? Cats don't have boring in-laws that take up entire weekends and they don't soak the bathroom and scribble on walls either, do they? Just what is the obsession with white weddings and 2.4 children anyway? For the first time in history, long-term relationships are no longer a necessity, but a luxury. Yet you're still deemed a failure if you don't find The One, and worse if you're not even looking in the first place! Just because you don't want to share your home and bed with a significant other, it doesn't mean love is out of the question but perhaps, like Helen, the shackles of commitment are not for you. Join her as she goes on a quest to find a more realistic approach to romance to fit with today's independent lifestyles and to discover what works and what doesn't along the way. Through hilarious anecdotes from her own love life to undercover missions, including a meeting for sex addicts, a 'wife-finding tour' to Ukraine and staying in a polyamorous commune in The Highlands along with fascinating interviews with anthropologists, psychologists, swingers, sperm donor mothers and more, journalist Helen debunks the fairytale myth that finding true love is our only route to Utopia.

In Screw the Fairytale, Helen Croydon traces the history of relationships in an immersive, first-person account. She shows how marriage was never supposed to be about love anyway. She investigates the prevalence of mistresses across different eras and cultures to see what we can learn from infidelity and explores the science of falling in love. Highlights of her mission take in a polyamorous commune in the Scottish Highlands (where she has to carry out a sexual pact), a wife-finding tour to the Ukraine and infiltrating a network of single professional women who've chosen to give up on finding love and get a sperm donor instead. Interviews with psychologists, evolutionists, asexuals, swingers, philanderers, long-term marrieds, mistresses and 40 year old virgins all combine to break new ground in this humorous and insightful guide to sex and love for the modern girl.

Attitudes towards, and strategies for treating, those who suffer from abnormal mental states have evolved considerably over the centuries, and these are reflected in the various literary genres of all eras. In its introduction, this book provides a concise, yet thorough, overview of this phenomenon, citing key examples taken from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Each of the eight chapters which constitute Part One of this study then focuses on representations of a particular mental health issue in a work of literature produced by a twenty-first-century French woman writer. Considering the causes and symptoms of the given condition, it situates the representation of its treatment in relation to current attitudes and practices in the West. Inspired by the concept that reading literature which concentrates on mental health problems can be both informative and of comfort to those affected by such issues, Part Two provides detailed textual analyses, and discusses the English-language versions, of four works examined in Part One which already exist in translation. Suggesting how these may be of benefit to an Anglophone readership, it recommends that the four remaining texts, which may be equally helpful, are suitable for translation into English.

Candid and contemporary, this book gives you a Christian place to turn for answers to your most intimate--and embarrassing--questions. Billions of people have had sex. Far fewer have made love. In The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex, author Sheila Wray Gregoire helps women see how sexual intimacy was designed to be physically stupendous but also incredibly intimate. Whether you're about to walk down the aisle, newly married, or you've been married for decades, The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex will lead you on a wonderful journey of discovery toward the amazing sex life God designed you for. With humor, research, and lots of anecdotes, author Sheila Wray Gregoire helps women see how our culture's version of sex, which concentrates on the physical above all else, makes sex shallow. God, on the other hand, intended sex to unite us physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Gregoire walks through these three aspects of sex, showing how to make each amazing, and how to overcome the roadblocks in each area we often encounter. Drawing on survey results from over 2,000 people, she also includes lots of voices from other Good Girls, giving insight into how other women have learned to truly enjoy sex in marriage.

Frustrated with her stalled career as a broadcast journalist and uninspired by dating naive and needy guys her own age, Helen Croydon joins a website to seek an older man. She expects it to be just a few fun dates in some fancy bars but finds herself propelled into a world of Prada shopping trips, fine dining, first-class travel and fascinating, powerful men. Helen's soul-searching dating adventures take her to New York, Malaysia, highbrow sex parties, top ski resorts and London's finest hotels. When one of her dates alludes to a monthly allowance, she is shocked, but how long will her resistance to the idea last? Sugar Daddy Diaries is a confessional true story that questions modern ideals about relationships, examines the attraction of power and asks if money can ever be the currency of love.

When Helen’s friends all started settling down and having kids, she was determined to fill her weekends with something other than cocktails. So she threw herself into the world of endurance sport. From glamorous party girl to marathon runner, ocean swimmer and even, perhaps, a Team GB triathlete, this is Helen’s inspiring and hilarious story.

From the bestselling author of It Ends With Us, a novella about the search for happily ever after. A chance encounter in the dark leads eighteen-year-old Daniel and the girl who stumbles across him to profess their love for each other. But this love has conditions: they agree it will last only one hour, and it will be only make-believe. When their hour is up and the girl rushes off like Cinderella, Daniel tries to convince himself that what happened between them seemed perfect only because they were pretending it was. Moments like that happen only in fairy tales. One year and one bad relationship later, his disbelief in love-at-first-sight is stripped away the day he meets Six: a girl with a strange name and an even stranger personality. Unfortunately for Daniel, finding true love doesn’t guarantee a happily ever after . . . it only further threatens it. Will an unbearable secret from the past jeopardize Daniel and Six’s only chance at saving each other?