Three generations of women. Three life altering events. As they discover the truth of their heritage, they’ll discover what makes the pieces of us…
THE PIECES OF US
by Claire Alexander
Penguin Michael Joseph UK, August 2025
(via Mushens Entertainment)
At fifty-eight Minnie McAllister isn’t an old woman. But as Alzheimer’s ravages her mind, her brain says otherwise.
Cat McAllister is tackling everything life can throw at her. And just when she thinks it can’t get any worse, she’s faced with the discovery that Minnie might not be the mother she once knew.
Meanwhile, Cat’s daughter, Ruby McAllister, who is staring at a two very blue lines, faces a decision that will change the course of her life.
As three generations of women are pulled in three different directions, each are forced to learn lessons about themselves that they never could have imagined.
Claire Alexander lives with her young family on the west coast of Scotland. A freelance journalist, she has written about parenting, sobriety, mental health and wellbeing for publications including The Washington Post, The Independent, The Huffington Post and Glamour. When she’s not writing or parenting, she’s on her paddle board, thinking about her next book. Claire is the author of Meredith, Alone and The Pieces of Us is her second novel.
Her hotel family welcomes Charlotte with chowder dinners and a cozy room, but her friend Evie has a looming life change of her own, and soon Charlotte seeks other attractions to navigate her grief. Will she, like in some television movie, find her way back through a romance, or are there larger forces at play on Hatteras Island? Heather Frese, winner of the Lee Smith Novel Prize and author of 
Enya is driving home on a dark and rainy night in the Dublin mountains when she stumbles across an accident. As a fierce storm rages, a teenage boy her own son’s age lies between life and death. A doctor, Enya provides life-saving CPR. But soon the police are asking her about the accident, the taxi driver first to the scene is stalking her at work and at home, and her soon to be ex-husband is wondering why she was on those Dublin mountain roads in the first place. 
Paris, 1910. Now that her engagement to an aristocrat has been called off, Jeanne Toussaint tries to make ends meet as a seamstress in unsavoury Montmartre. One night, she meets jeweller Louis Cartier in a nightclub. He and his brothers have shops in Paris, London and New York where anyone who’s anyone buys their jewellery. Louis immediately recognises that Jeanne has a sure sense of style and is immensely talented. But it’s more than that: he can’t deny his attraction to this charming, vivacious young woman. But storm clouds are gathering on Europe’s horizon, and the Cartier family are in danger of losing everything.
With a leading role on a hit TV show and a relationship with Hollywood’s latest heartthrob, Meg Bryan appears to have everything she ever wanted. But underneath the layers of makeup and hairspray, her happiness is as fake as her stage name, Lana Lord. Following a small breakdown at her thirtieth birthday party, she books an impromptu trip where she knows the grass is greener: Ireland. Specifically, the quaint little village where she and her best friend Aimee always dreamt of moving―a dream that fell apart when an accident claimed Aimee’s life a decade ago.