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.
Is your family geographically scattered? Has globalisation made your family a Distance Family? This book tells the candid story of how Distance Parents and Distance Grandparents struggle – and succeed – to adapt to their new reality. This isn’t family life as they had imagined it. If you are a Distance Parent or Distance Grandparent, all those how, why and what-if questions will find answers in these pages. You’ll realise, perhaps for the first time, that you’re not alone on your journey. Helen Ellis, researcher, writer, anthropologist and a veteran of Distance Grandparenting, examines everything from smart ways of tweaking your communication routines to tips for nourishing precious family relationships. These moving stories will soothe and inspire you, and more importantly, help you embrace your ever-changing Distance Family role. Are you a Distance Family daughter, son or grandchild living a globalised life? Do you worry about the folks back home? Is that you? Taking time to learn about Distance Family from your parent’s or grandparent’s perspective is a heartfelt act of love. With knowledge comes understanding… with understanding comes empathy… and that is a good thing for Distance Families. Being a Distance Grandparent – a Book for ALL Generations will make a difference to your Distance Family. The first part of a three-book series.
The bestselling author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code returns with a viciously funny, deeply felt collection of essays on friendship among grown-ass women.
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 chockablock with fabulous characters: cat-lady plastic surgeons and waterpark Adonises; bridge ladies and poker players; platinum medallion fliers and Garage Sale Swindlers; forty-year-old divorcées; fifty-year-old new moms and still-young octogenarians. 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.
Look at this picture. Tell me what you see...
The American South is rife with stories of a haunted past-especially its houses. In this eclectic and impressive collection, thirteen novelists were asked to build their tales around the photo of a dilapidated mansion. They were given two requirements-the house must appear in the story, and it should be a Southern Gothic tale. And they delivered.
From childish demons to a mad novelist, from the Mississippi delta to the Appalachians, this collection from emerging voices and New York Times bestselling authors explores what happens when secrets that lie beneath the dust are disturbed-and our worst nightmares begin.
Darkness lurks behind every corner, especially dead ends.
Contributors
Jeff Abbott
Helen Ellis
Patti Callahan Henry
Amanda Stevens
Paige Crutcher
Dana Chamblee Carpenter
Laura Benedict
Bryon Quertermous
Dave White
Lisa Morton
David Bell
J.T. Ellison
Ariel Lawhon
A sharp, funny, delightfully unhinged collection of stories set in the dark world of domesticity, American Housewife features murderous ladies who lunch, celebrity treasure hunters, and the best bra fitter south of the Mason Dixon line.
Meet the women of American Housewife: they wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These twelve irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam, from the gallery opening of a tinfoil artist to the fitting room of a legendary lingerie shop. Vicious, fresh, and nutty as a poisoned Goo Goo Cluster, American Housewife is an uproarious, pointed commentary on womanhood.
A sharp, funny, delightfully unhinged collection of stories set in the dark world of domesticity, American Housewifefeatures murderous ladies who lunch, celebrity treasure-hunters, and the best bra-fitter south of the Mason Dixon line. Meet the women of American Housewife:they wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party-crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These twelve irresistible stories take us from a haunted pre-war Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam, from the gallery opening of a tinfoil artist to the fitting room of a legendary lingerie shop. Vicious, fresh, and nutty as a poisoned Snicker, American Housewifeis an uproarious, pointed commentary on womanhood.
