THE AMAZING NEW NOVEL FROM CURTIS SITTENFELD: 'A rollercoaster of modern love and dating' STYLIST 'One of my all-time favourite authors. A brilliantly written, funny page-turner, I want to read it all again' PANDORA SYKES A TV script writer thinks she's over romance, until an unlikely love interest upends all her assumptions: a humorous, subversive and tender-hearted novel from the New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of Rodham, American Wife and Prep. _____________ Life is (not)* a Romantic Comedy... With a series of heartbreaks under her belt, Sally Milz - successful script writer for a legendary late-night TV comedy show - has long abandoned the search for love. But when her friend and fellow writer begins to date a glamorous actress, he joins the growing club of interesting but average-looking men who get romantically involved with accomplished, beautiful women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch, poking fun at this 'social rule'. The reverse never happens for a woman. Then Sally meets Noah, a pop idol with a reputation for dating models. But this isn't a romantic comedy - it's real life. Would someone like him ever date someone like her? Skewering all our certainties about why we fall in love, ROMANTIC COMEDY is a witty and probing tale of how the heart will follow itself, no matter what anyone says. It is Curtis Sittenfeld at her most sharp, daring and compassionate best. 'Curtis Sittenfeld is in a league of her own' GUARDIAN 'Anyone who reads Sittenfeld will read anything she ever writes' THE TIMES

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'This is Pride and Prejudice 2.0 and I must confess, I liked it more than the original' STYLIST 'Bold and brilliant' GLAMOUR 'Sheer joy... Giddy and glam and a hearty update of Pride and Prejudice' JESSIE BURTON, author of The Miniaturist Liz and Jane Bennet are good daughters. They've come home to suburban Cincinnati to get their mother to stop feeding their father steak as he recovers from heart surgery, to tidy up the crumbling Tudor-style family home, and to wrench their three sisters from their various states of arrested development. Once they are under the same roof, old patterns return fast. Soon they are being berated for their single status - and for two successful women in their late thirties, it really is too much to bear. That is, until the Lucas family's BBQ throws them in the way of some eligible single men . . . In this dazzling, heart-warming read, the much-loved classic Pride and Prejudice is catapulted into our modern world, singing out with hilarity and truth. __________________________________________________ Praise for ELIGIBLE: 'If there exists a more perfect pairing than Curtis Sittenfeld and Jane Austen, we dare you to find it'Elle 'These days, if Curtis Sittenfeld writes it, I read it' Judy Blume 'Eligible has all the charm, wit and romance of Pride & Prejudice...an absolute delight' Red 'Dazzling'Woman and Home 'Such a feast of a book' Nigella Lawson 'Not since "Clueless," has Austen been so delightedly interpreted' New York Times

'This addictive novel is the SLIDING DOORS of American politics. Gripping' STYLIST 'Startlingly good. One of my favourite writers.' KATE ATKINSON ____________ 'Awfully opinionated for a girl' is what they call Hillary as she grows up in her Chicago suburb. Smart, diligent, and a bit plain, that's the general consensus. Then Hillary goes to college, and her star rises. At Yale Law School, she continues to be a leader- and catches the eye of driven, handsome and charismatic Bill. But when he asks her to marry him, Hillary gives him a firm No. How might things have turned out for them, for America, for the world itself, if Hillary Rodham had really turned down Bill Clinton? With her sharp but always compassionate eye, Sittenfeld explores the loneliness, moral ambivalence and iron determination that characterise the quest for high office, as well as the painful compromises demanded of female ambition in a world ruled by men. _____________________________ 'A lot of fun. A wonderful sad dream of what might have happened' GUARDIAN 'It ends up being a love letter to a type: the female intellectual, who is given none of the licence of her less talented male peers. At the end, i found myself saying Oh My God' OBSERVER 'An explosive new book' GRAZIA 'Getting inside a living person's head sounds like a colossally bad idea, but Sittenfeld makes it convincing here, just as she did with a character based on First Lady Laura Bush in her 2008 novel, AMERICAN WIFE' BBC CULTURE 'An ingenious yet plausible glimpse of an alternative reality' THE SPECTATOR 'Sittenfeld's RODHAM offers the cartharsis of uncomplicated regret' NEW YORKER 'A nauseating, moving, morally suggestive, technically brilliant book that made me think more than any in recent memory' NPR 'Deviously clever . . . Sittenfeld's Hillary is both a player in the Game of Thrones and a romance novel heroine. She's a brilliant badass who has found her voice and knows how to use it. She's whoever she wants to be' O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE 'Of all the SLIDING DOORS fantasies offered by the last 40 years of American office, this may be the most mouth-watering. THE BIG ISSUE 'Fascinating. Rich-with-possibilities concept' SAINSBURY'S MAGAZINE

"They were windows into emotions I had and hadn't had, into other settings and circumstances and observations and relationships." Decades later, Sittenfeld was met by the same feeling selecting the stories for this year's edition. The result is a striking and nuanced collection, bringing to life awkward college students, disgraced public figures, raunchy grandparents, and mystical godmothers. To read these stories is to experience the transporting joys of discovery and affirmation, and to realise that story writing in America continues to flourish.

WHAT IF HILLARY RODHAM HAD TURNED DOWN BILL CLINTON'S PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE?

'Awfully opinionated for a girl' is what they call Hillary as she grows up in her Chicago suburb. Smart, diligent, and a bit plain, that's the general consensus. Then Hillary goes to college, and her star rises. At Yale Law School, she continues to be a leader and catches the eye of driven, handsome and charismatic Bill. But when he asks her to marry him, Hillary gives him a firm No. The rest, as they say, isn't history.

How might things have turned out for them, for America, for the world itself, if Hillary Rodham had really turned down Bill Clinton? With her sharp but always compassionate eye, Sittenfeld explores the loneliness, moral ambivalence and iron determination that characterise the quest for high office, as well as the painful compromises demanded of female ambition in a world ruled by men.

Uncannily astute and witty in the telling, RODHAM is a brilliant reimagining - an unmissable literary landmark and truly a novel of our times.

_____________ From the bestselling author of RODHAM, AMERICAN WIFE and YOU THINK IT, I'LL SAY IT. 'Sittenfeld writes girls and women as they truly are, with shades of light and dark, with and without grace, apologetic as well as fearless' GUARDIAN 'PREP might just be my favourite book' PANDORA SYKES 'Sittenfeld shares with Salinger a knack of capturing, in effortless prose, a teenager mindset' THE TIMES _____________ Lee Fiora is a shy fourteen-year-old when she leaves small-town Indiana for a scholarship at Ault, an exclusive boarding school in Massachusetts. Her head is filled with images from the school brochure of handsome boys in sweaters leaning against old brick buildings, girls running with lacrosse sticks across pristine athletics fields, everyone singing hymns in chapel. But as she soon learns, Ault is a minefield of unstated rules and incomprehensible social rituals, and Lee must work hard to find - and maintain - her place in the pecking order. _____________ 'PREP is more than a coming of age story - it's a study of social class ... and Sittenfeld renders it with astonishing deftness and clarity.' JENNIFER EGAN 'Straightforward, serious, funny.' London Review of Books 'Sharp, caustic and brilliantly observed' Observer

Meghan Daum's unforgettable debut novel brings her sharp wit and courageous social commentary to the story of Lucinda Trout, a New York television reporter in search of greener pastures. Moving to the slower-paced, friendly, and vastly more affordable Midwestern town of Prairie City, Lucinda zealously creates a series of televised reports for her New York audience about her newfound quality of life. But when Lucinda falls for eccentric local Mason Clay, her naivete about the real world leads her down an unexpected path, where she encounters, among other things, a drafty old farmhouse filled with children, an ever-growing menagerie of farm animals, and the harshest winter the region has seen in twenty years. In other words, simplicity just isn't as simple as it is cracked up to be, and "quality of life," Lucinda learns, is much more complicated than she ever imagined.

'Nobody else writes with such precision and amusement about the absolute inability of men and women to understand each other' RED MAGAZINE 'Recommended for anyone who enjoys short stories. She really doesn't shy away from sticky, nuanced subjects ... delivered with absolute poise. Delicious' PANDORA SYKES, The High-Low podcast ____________________________________ Sittenfeld's wryly hilarious and insightful new collection, HELP YOURSELF, illuminates human experience and gracefully upends our assumptions about class and race, envy and disappointment, gender and celebrity. Suburban friends fall out after a racist encounter at a birthday party is caught on video and posted on Facebook; an illustrious Manhattan film crew are victims of their own snobbery when they underestimate a pre-school teacher from the Mid-West; and a group of young writers fight about love and narrative style as they compete for a prestigious bursary. Connecting each of these three stories is Sittenfeld's truthful yet merciless eye. Full of tenderness and compassion, this dazzling collection celebrates our humanity in all its pettiness and glory. A STYLIST Best Books for Autumn title Featured in the Sunday Times Guide to Culture Praise for CURTIS SITTENFELD: 'You won't want these stories to end' REESE WITHERSPOON 'Perfect miniatures in deadpan prose' GUARDIAN 'Clear-eyed and compulsive' MAIL ON SUNDAY

BY THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF RODHAM and AMERICAN WIFE 'A work of psychological genius' OBSERVER _______________________________- Identical twins, Kate and Violet are about as unlike as two peas from the same pod can be. Except in one respect - they share a hidden gift. But after Kate inadvertently reveals their secret when they are thirteen years old, their lives are set on diverging paths. Twenty years later Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. Violet is single, and lives a much more flamboyant and eccentric life. Then one day Violet ignites a media storm by predicting a major earthquake in the St Louis area where they live. As the day Violet has announced for the earthquake draws nearer, Kate must attempt to repair her fraught relationship with her sister, and to face truths about herself she has long tried to deny.

A dazzling, smart and razor-sharp story collection by Curtis Sittenfeld, Sunday Times bestselling author of Rodham and American Wife. The theme that unites these stories is how even the cleverest people tend to misread others, and how much we all deceive ourselves. Sharp and tender, funny and wise, they show Sittenfeld's knack for creating real, believable characters that spring off the page, while also skewering contemporary mores with brilliant dry wit. 'DO-OVER', ONE OF THE STORIES IN THIS COLLECTION, WAS SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 SUNDAY TIMES EFG SHORT STORY AWARD.

*** As heard on BBC Radio Four's Book Club with James Naughtie*** 'Honest, wonderful and smart as hell' Guardian 'Curtis Sittenfeld is in a league of her own' Observer All I did is marry him. You are the ones who gave him power. Quiet, bookish Alice Blackwell never dreamed of being First Lady. Much less to a President whose politics she doesn't believe in. On perhaps the most important day of her husband's presidency, Alice looks back on the strange and unlikely path that led her to the White House, and to a decision - both treacherous and long overdue - that could jeopardise everything. Taking inspiration from real life, American Wife is a remarkable portrait of a woman caught between her feelings for her husband, her country, and herself. 'My favourite book of the century' HADLEY FREEMAN, GUARDIAN

A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice Lindgren has no idea that she will one day end up in the White House, married to the president. In her small Wisconsin hometown, she learns the virtues of politeness, but a tragic accident when she is seventeen shatters her identity and changes the trajectory of her life. More than a decade later, when the charismatic son of a powerful Republican family sweeps her off her feet, she is surprised to find herself admitted into a world of privilege. And when her husband unexpectedly becomes governor and then president, she discovers that she is married to a man she both loves and fundamentally disagrees with-and that her private beliefs increasingly run against her public persona. As her husband's presidency enters its second term, Alice must confront contradictions years in the making and face questions nearly impossible to answer.

Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.
Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school's glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.
As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of-and, ultimately, a participant in-their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she's a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.
Ultimately, Lee's experiences-complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.

"From the Hardcover edition."

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of RODHAM, AMERICAN WIFE, YOU THINK IT, I'LL SAY IT and HELP YOURSELF 'A rigorous and wily stylist. She packs her pages with clever observations without appearing to be trying' NEW YORK TIMES 'Grave, good-humoured, deeply engaging' GUARDIAN ____________ Hannah is a confused fourteen-year-old. In the magazines she reads, celebrities plan elaborate weddings; in Hannah's own life, her parents' marriage is crumbling. Over the next decade and a half, love throws her some complicated questions. At what point can you no longer blame your adult failures on your messed up childhood? Is settling for someone who's not your soulmate an act of maturity or an admission of defeat? And if you move to another state for a guy who might not love you back, are you being plucky - or just pathetic? _______ Readers love THE MAN OF MY DREAMS: *****'I love everything Curtis Sittenfeld writes and this was no exception. Excellent' *****'Very realistic portrayal of an emotionally abusive atmosphere. Insightful, thoughtful' *****'Curtis Sittenfeld is a magnificent writer. Fantastic'