Books to Read if You Like Sex and the City

Elements of Style, the Pulitzer Prize—winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein’s first novel, is a scathing comedy about New York’s high society facing the post—9/11 world. F

When Nola Devlin is turned down for her dream job because she’s overweight, she decides to become thin-or, at least, pretend to be. The alter ego she creates is a smashing success who is offered movie proposals, national television appearances and even dates…though no one’s met her in person, of course. Then Nola takes Belinda a bit too far, and is forced to join “The Cinderella Pact” and drop the pounds. As the weight comes off, however, Nola’s problems begin to mount.

In this powerful and uplifting novel, a mother and her daughter-in-law bravely leave their troubled marriages and face the challenge of starting over.

When Rona Jaffe’s superb page-turner was first published in 1958, it changed contemporary fiction forever. Some readers were shocked, but millions more were electrified when they saw themselves reflected in its story of five young employees of a New York publishing company.

A beautifully written food memoir chronicling one woman’s journey from her rural Midwestern hometown to the intoxicating world of New York City fine dining—and back again—in search of her culinary roots.

In Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham illuminates the experiences that are part of making one’s way in the world: falling in love, feeling alone, being ten pounds overweight despite eating only health food, having to prove yourself in a room full of men twice your age, finding true love, and most of all, having the guts to believe that your story is one that deserves to be told.

Natalie is a Bloomingdale’s salesgirl mooning over her ex-boyfriend; Felicia has been quietly in love with her boss for seventeen years; and Andie is a cynical private detective who specializes in cheating husbands. For these three women, as well as many others, everything is about to change . . . and all thanks to the power of one perfect little black dress.

When Sylvie Furst and Cassandra Puffin meet at Bennington College, that Vermont haven for well-to-do young eccentrics and liberal-arts students, they firmly believe theirs will be a friendship for the ages. From the heyday of college through those first delirious post-college years, the two girls have nothing but each other and their charmingly-decorated apartments to keep them afloat.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Vacationers, a smart, highly entertaining novel about a tight-knit group of friends from college— and what it means to finally grow up, well after adulthood has set in.