Two experts tackle the big questions about intimacy and relationships, in this book that aims to change how you think about long-term love We can't get enough of doomed lovers torn apart by betrayal, taboo, and violence--as long as they stay on the screen or the page. In our own beds we want the happy ending. But all around us, divorce statistics rocket as the hopes of lonely singles plummet. In an age of financial and political uncertainty, love is the only thing left to believe in. So why do we give up on it so easily? Through interlocking stories that are moving, funny, and all too familiar, Joanne Fedler and Graeme Friedman combine their years of personal and professional experience to tackle the toughest of questions around intimacy, such as How does romance sour into incompatibility? Are men really frightened by intimacy? Why don't women understand that sex is intimacy? Is staying in an unhappy relationship better than being alone? How do we keep passion and intimacy alive with the same person over time ? Finding and keeping intimacy is a massive challenge, but it's not impossible, once you know the secrets.

Once upon a time, a young girl ventured into a dark forest, looking for a cure for her much-loved elder sister ... A touching, tender and lyrical fable about what we do for the ones we love, and the beauty and mystery of being alive in a world in which we are part of everything, and everything is part of us. As a terrible pandemic rages through the country, a young girl, Teo, leaves her small village and sets off into the forest, in search of a cure for her sister who is infected with the pox. Her father Merdocai has surrendered himself to the evil Marquis to be experimented upon for the Greater Good; and with her mother long-dead, all Teo has to keep her going is the love of her sister, her father and her friend Rodrigo, a stuttering poet. As Teo ventures deeper into the forest, she encounters creatures and teachers who hold the answers to all the questions she has about who she is, and where she has come from. Meanwhile, out in the depths of the ocean, a whale is returning to the place he was born, to exhale his last breath. While Teo does not know this, he too holds secrets that belong to Teo's story. The Whale's Last Song is a tender, sweet and wise fable, on what we are prepared to do for those we love; a celebration of the beauty and mystery of being alive in a world in which we are part of everything, and everything is part of us; and a love song to the natural world. It is The Alchemist meets The Princess Bride meets The Little Prince. It is a little gem. 'A bright ode to all that is good and beautiful in the world. The Whale's Last Song is a timeless tale, an allegory of the heart.' Maggie Hamilton 'Fresh, exquisite, a creative tour de force ... Both challenging and reassuring, the story weaves a sense of belonging through the fallibility of being human and the mysteries of being alive.' Suzie Miller, Prima Facie

At 34, Faith has given up on love. Her cleavage is disappointing, her best friend is clinically depressed and her younger sister is getting breast implants as an engagement present. She used to think about falling in love, but that was a long time ago. Having heard one too many love-gone-wrong stories from the other side of her desk, Faith is worn thin by her work as a legal counsellor in a women's crisis centre. Then one night, an odd twist of fate brings her to a suburban veterinary clinic where she wrings out years of unshed tears. It is a night that will slowly change the way she sees herself and begin the unearthing of long-buried family secrets so she can forgive herself for something she doesn't remember, but that has shaped her into the woman she is today. Faith will finally understand what she has always needed to know: that before you can save others, you have to save yourself.

Mia is in Bosnia as a journalist when she is summoned by Asher, the man she blames for her father's death. In his dying moments, Asher returns the dreamcloth to her, a patchwork of beads and lace he stole when she was just a child. The cloth, woven by a seamstress in a grim shtetl in Lithuania, holds the mystery of a forbidden love affair of Mia's grandmother Maya, as she fled the anti-Semitism of Europe in the 1920's. Mia returns to her homeland South Africa, on the eve of the first democratic elections where she grapples to make sense of the injustices, absences and hauntings of her childhood. What happened to her artist father Issey, her nanny Sarafina, and her best friend Grace? The dreamcloth with its 'glimmer of blue silk, a moon of filigree lace and woven cobblestones of amber, ' holds the answers to all that has been lost. Fedler weaves together the present, past and distant past in a stirring epic of family secrets handed down from generation to generation, and ghosts that will not let go of the living.