The Professors’ Wives’ Club

This tepid debut novel follows four women as they band together to save a garden from being gobbled up by an expanding college campus. Mary, a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and professor; Hannah, an MFA student whose husband becomes increasingly distant; Sofia, a young mother who gave up her previous life as a powerful Hollywood agent; and Ashleigh, who is afraid to reveal her lesbian relationship to her conservative senator father, all share a love of the small garden nestled next to Manhattan University’s faculty housing, and as they organize to stop the imminent excavation, they form friendships and make major changes in their lives. There isn’t anything you haven’t seen before in here, but Rendell does a fine job of following the formula. (Sept.)