Meet Sophie Applebaum, an everywoman who doesn't quite fit in anywhere. She's looking for a career - but lacks a calling; looking for love - but winds up with men who put her off instead of pull her in. The women she befriends want a girl who's strong but who can't say no. At drinks parties, she feels like a solid trying to do a liquid's job.

It isn't easy to find your place in the world, but Sophie's willing to work at it. And with every false step, she might just be getting closer to creating the life she wants to have...

Prodigiously talented, mordantly wry and wise, Bank offers... irresistible reading. --San Francisco Chronicle A five-course meal: loaded with pleasure. --Los Angeles Times Bank possesses a prodigious talent for snappy one-liners, and her self-deprecating anecdotes belie intelligence and sophistication. --The Washington Post Bittersweet, tremendously winning... enthralling and engaging. --Entertainment Weekly

Melissa Bank is the author of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing and The Wonder Spot. She won the 1993 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction, and holds an MFA from Cornell University. Her work has appeared in Allure, Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Guardian, North American Review, O: the Oprah Magazine, Ploughshares, Washington Post, Zoetrope and many others. Her books have been translated into 33 languages. She divides her time between New York City and East Hampton.