Even twenty years into marriage, Helen Ellis’s husband still makes her heart pitter patter. The New York Times bestselling author paints a portrait of true romance for our times in these surprising, sexy, and hilariously frank essays about love, marriage, and her last first kiss. "Ellis is one of our greatest living humorists, in the same league as Sedaris and Irby...A fascinating portrait of middle-aged love.” —Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward Welcome to the Coral Lounge, a room in Helen Ellis’s New York City apartment painted such an exuberant shade that a Peeping Tom left a sticky note asking for the color. It is in the Coral Lounge where all the parties happen: A game called “What’s in the box?” makes its uproarious debut, the Puzzle Posse pounces on a 500-piece jigsaw of a beheaded priest, and guests don blindfolds for a raucous bridal shower. When the pandemic shuts down the city, the Coral Lounge becomes a place of refuge, where Helen and her husband binge-watch Joan Collins’s Dynasty, dote on two spoiled cats, and where Helen discovers that even twenty years into marriage, her husband still makes her heart pitter patter.

The debut novel by the author of American Housewife. Eating the Cheshire Cat lures us into a world of perfectly planned parties and steep social ladders, where traditional rites of passage take unpredictable and horrifying turns as three girls and their overbearing mothers collide. In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, beauty is as beauty does, with axes and knives and killer smiles. Sarina Summers and her mother will stop at nothing to have it all. Nicole Hicks harbors a fierce obsession with Sarina, which repeatedly undermines Mrs. Hicks's ambitious goals. Bitty Jack Carlson, a nice girl from the wrong side of the tracks, is caught in the crossfire but struggles to succeed outside the confines of this outrageous yet eerily familiar Southern community. It's survival of the fittest. Which girl will come out on top? Covering everything from summer camp to the University of Alabama's Homecoming game, this fast-paced and unforgettable novel will keep readers guessing until the bitter end.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A raucous, whip-smart collection of stories featuring retro-feminist ladies who lunch.” —Elle Meet the women of American Housewife. They wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it’s cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies from the oven. Taking us from a haunted pre-war Manhattan apartment building to the unique initiation ritual of a book club, these twelve delightfully demented stories are a refreshing and wicked answer to the question: “What do housewives do all day?”

The bestselling author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code returns with an “inspiring, hilarious, straight-to-the-point” (Entertainment Weekly) collection of essays on friendship among grown-ass women. "Ellis' prose is filled with so many laugh lines, you might want to go ahead and book the Botox.” —NPR When Helen Ellis and her lifelong friends arrive for a reunion on the Redneck Riviera, they unpack more than their suitcases: stories of husbands and kids, lost parents and lost jobs, powdered onion dip and photographs you have to hold by the edges, dirty jokes and sunscreen with SPF higher than they hair-sprayed their bangs senior year, and a bad mammogram. It's a diagnosis that scares them, but could never break their bond. Because women pushing fifty won't be pushed around. In these twelve gloriously comic and moving essays, Helen Ellis dishes on married middle-age sex, sobs with a theater full of women as a psychic exorcises their sorrows, gets twenty shots of stomach bile to the neck to get rid of her double chin, and gathers up the courage to ask, "Are you there, Menopause? It's Me, Helen." A book that reads like the best cocktail party of your life, Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light is alive with the sensational humor and ferocious love for her friends that won Helen Ellis legions of fans. This book has a raw vulnerability and an emotional generosity that takes this acclaimed author to a whole new level of accomplishment.

A collection of essays that are "like being seated beside the most entertaining guest at a dinner party" (Atlanta Journal Constitution)—from the New York Times bestselling author of American Housewives “Thank you Helen Ellis for writing down the Southern Lady Code so that others may learn.” —Ann Patchett, bestselling author of The Dutch House Helen Ellis has a mantra: “If you don't have something nice to say, say something not-so-nice in a nice way.” Say “weathered” instead of “she looks like a cake left out in the rain” and “I’m not in charge” instead of “they’re doing it wrong.” In these twenty-three raucous essays, Ellis transforms herself into a dominatrix Donna Reed to save her marriage, inadvertently steals a Burberry trench coat, avoids a neck lift, and finds a black-tie gown that gives her the confidence of a drag queen. While she may have left Alabama for New York City, Helen Ellis is clinging to her Southern accent like mayonnaise to white bread, and offering readers a hilarious, completely singular view on womanhood for both sides of the Mason-Dixon.

Tells the story of Stephen Gordon, a girl born at the turn of century, and her struggle for acceptance as a lesbian.

Stuck with little money and divorced, rising media star Grace Stanton moves in with her widowed mother and attends court-mandated group therapy where she bonds with three fellow patients who she helps plot respective pursuits of justice and closure.

NOW AN ABC TELEVISION DRAMA STARRING DAVID WENHAM AND REBEL WILSON When Les Norton moved into his old flame Side Valve Susie's flat in Bondi for a few days while she was out of town, everything should have been a piece of cake-except Price and Eddie had other ideas. Waverley Council were demolishing Bondi baths and there were two bodies buried under the handball court. The man to get them out? Major Garrick Lewis, aka The Gecko.With Norton for company, The Gecko literally took Bondi in his stride; and everything that went with it-Mossad hit squads, the KGB, ASIO, yobbo builders looking for trouble, loose women looking for action. For once, Les was flat out keeping up.

The iconic Polly Pepper, musical comedy superstar of yesteryear, is experiencing a bit of a professional dry spell-she can barely keep her bank account afloat, let alone her career. So when the nefarious Laura Crawford, scene-stealing former cast mate and perpetual diva, proposes a Polly Pepper Playhouse reunion cruise, Polly is on board, full-steam ahead. But she soon realizes that Hollywood on the high-seas will be nothing short of a shipwreck, especially after Laura is found dead, slain by the Season Six DVD of The Polly Pepper Playhouse box set. Now, if Polly can't solve this maritime mystery, a clever killer could send Polly's whole career-and even her life-overboard. "Polly proves once again that she's no slouch as a detective." -Publishers Weekly "The plot is well-crafted. . .will keep the reader guessing until the end." -Romantic Times

"Can you blame a publicist for blurring the lines between what's real and what's a dream, when her client is a gorgeous actor?" --Jodi Picoult Sophie is a Hollywood publicist who has a fabulous job, a fabulous boyfriend, and a fabulous life. She even scores her PR firm's most important actor client and every woman's dream--Billy Fox. But will a steamy make-out session in a restaurant alley with her big-name client cost Sophie her job? And does she really want an escape from her life and her loving, if imperfect, relationship with her investment banker boyfriend? The Star Attraction takes us on a wild ride through one woman's daytime soap come to life. "Alison Sweeney's novel is an entertaining, backstage glimpse at those who organize the lives of the Hollywood elite. It's great fun for any reader who secretly sneaks peeks at People magazine in the checkout line at the grocery store, and wonders, What if . . . ?" --Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of Lone Wolf and The Storyteller Publishers Weekly: Actress and reality show host Sweeney (The Mommy Diet) hits it out of the park with her engaging fiction debut about an L.A.-based star publicist who lets her love life get in the way of work Sweeney uses many familiar chick-lit tropes but does it very well and also infuses her story with insider-y Hollywood situations and realistic depictions of relationship woes. It all adds up to a pleasurable read, and a particularly impressive first foray into this genre. Kirkus: A highly entertaining debut from Sweeney, host of The Biggest Loser and star of Days of Our Lives for 20 years. Sweeney's insider knowledge adds authenticity to this laugh-out-loud story of working and romancing in Los Angeles. What makes the book remarkable is not so much the plot but Sophie's reactions to what happens. You just have to love this girl. That sense of humor that can save a person in real life makes this an extremely fun read.