Non- VCA books
Chick Lit
Plum Sykes’s beguiling debut welcomes readers to the glamorous world of Park Avenue Princesses, the girls who careen through Manhattan in search of the perfect Fake Bake (tan acquired from Portofino Tanning Salon), a ride on a PJ (private jet) with the ATM (rich boyfriend), and the ever-elusive fiancé.
With invitations to high-profile baby showers and benefits, more Marc Jacobs clothes than is decent, and a department store heiress for a best friend, our heroine known only as Moi is living at the peak of New York society. But what is Moi to do when her engagement falls apart? Can she ever find happiness in a city filled with the distractions of Front Row Girls, dermatologists, premieres, and eyebrow waxes? Is it possible to find love in a town where her friends think that the secret to happiness is getting invited to the Van Cleef and Arpels über-private sample sale? And how is she going to deal with the endless phone calls from her mother in England demanding that she get married to the Earl next door?
With enormous wit and an insider’s eye, Sykes captures the nuances of the rich and spoiled in a heartwarming social satire, featuring a loveable "champagne bubble of a girl" who’s just looking for love (and maybe the perfect pair of Chloé jeans).
He's Just Not That Into You -- based on a popular episode of Sex and the City -- educates otherwise smart women on how to tell when a guy just doesn't like them enough, so they can stop wasting time making excuses for a dead-end relationship.
Reexamining familiar scenarios and classic mindsets that keep us in unsatisfying relationships, Behrendt and Tuccillo's wise and wry understanding of the sexes spares women hours of waiting by the phone, obsessing over the details with sympathetic girlfriends, and hoping his mixed messages really mean "I'm in love with you and want to be with you."
He's Just Not That Into You is provocative, hilarious, and, above all, intoxicatingly liberating. It deserves a place on every woman's night table. It knows you're a beautiful, smart, funny woman who deserves better. The next time you feel the need to start "figuring him out," consider the glorious thought that maybe He's just not that into you. And then set yourself loose to go find the one who is.
Struggling to graduate from NYU and afford her microscopic studio apartment, Nanny takes a position caring for the only son of the wealthy X family. She rapidly learns the insane amount of juggling involved to ensure that a Park Avenue wife who doesn't work, cook, clean, or raise her own child has a smooth day.
When the Xs marriage begins to disintegrate, Nanny ends up involved way beyond the bounds of human decency or good taste. Her tenure with the X family becomes a nearly impossible mission to maintain the mental health of their four-year-old, her own integrity and, most importantly, her sense of humor. Over nine tense months Mrs. X and Nanny perform the age-old dance of decorum and power as they test the limits of modern-day servitude.
The Nanny Diaries deftly skewers the manner in which America's over-privileged raise les petites over-privileged-as if grooming them for a Best in Show competition. Written by two former nannies, this alternately comic and poignant satire punctures the glamour of Manhattan's upper class.
The Perfect Manhatan
In their attempt to titillate while criticizing the high life, bartender/writer Shear and bartender/actress Toomey shake an imperfect cocktail with this story of a sexy young mixologist's fabulous but sordid summer working in the Hamptons. After graduating from Columbia, aspiring writer Cassie tends bar at a posh SoHo watering hole, experience that lands her a summer spot at the front bar of Hamptons hot spot Spark. Cassie, who has blue collar roots, is quickly swept up in the scene: flirting for tips up to $1,000 and landing handsome trust-fund boyfriend James Richard Edmonton III. By Labor Day weekend, the frenetic socializing and spending hard-earned cash on designer dresses take a toll on the hopeful screenwriter. While the authors divulge interesting behind-the-bar secrets plus tidbits on how bartenders rip off bar owners, in fleshing out the Hamptons elite they resort to stale Lizzie Grubman and P. Diddy references and WASPy stereotypes. (Cassie dubs her romantic rivals, decked out in pastel cashmere sweater sets and pearls, the "Pearls Girls.")
The Starter Wife
Gracie Pollock should have suspected that her movie executive husband, Kenny, was cheating on her when he began to wear the earring. But she missed the clues, and at the age of 41 -- which makes her, as a Hollywood woman, almost assisted-living-ready -- Kenny dumps her via cell phone, weeks before their pre-nup would have expired. The heroine of Gigi Levangie Grazer's third novel, The Starter Wife, thus plummets from being a classic Wife Of, botoxed and boob-jobbed -- "easy on the eyes and hard on the 401(k)" -- to being a single mother confronting survival without resources. Well, not quite without resources: She and her 4-year-old-daughter are invited to housesit another Wife's glam Malibu digs. So she has a reprieve during which to become reacquainted with her true self and, with luck, snare another man.
Here is the beloved bestseller that first introduced Becky Bloomwood, the irrepressible one-woman shopping phenomenon whose hilarious adventures have kept readers coming back for more! In CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC, Becky lands a dream job, and a dreamy guy, and then, lands in a lot of hot water.
Becky Bloomwood returns! She and Luke and her credit cards are headed across the Atlantic ... to a Big Apple address that her bill collectors don't have. With all of Fifth Avenue to shop, she's taken the city by storm ... but will she have to return it?
Becky Bloomwood is back—and she just can't say no to saying "I do"—
Everyone's favorite shopaholic is back! Becky Bloomwood is about to get some incredible news—she has a long lost sister. But can her very own sister really... hate shopping?!
Star of the bestselling Shopaholic series Becky Bloomwood (now Brandon) is pregnant! But when the celebrity obstetrician turns out to be her husband Luke's glamorous, intellectual ex-girlfriend, Becky's perfect world starts to crumble. She's shopping for two . . . but are there three in her marriage?
Just hours before her long awaited promotion to partnership is announced, corporate attorney Samantha Sweeting learns she made a 50-million-pound mistake. Dazed and unable to confront the firm's principals, she boards a train out of London. Dropped off in the middle of nowhere, she asks for directions from a nearby country home, and this hilarious story of transformation from lawyer to housekeeper begins. Katherine Kellgren depicts the kind nouveau-riche landowners, Teddy and Trish, with exaggerated English accents. When handsome gardener Nathaniel makes it known he's ready for romance, this delightful, but somewhat implausible, story takes off
Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets—secrets she lets slip to just the wrong guy.
