Helen Ellis Books in Order

Three Alabama girls grow up amid ruthless social ambitions and their mothers’ demands. Sarina’s determination to succeed, Nicole’s fixation on her, and Bitty Jack’s struggle against class prejudice collide as familiar Southern rites of passage take violent and darkly comic turns.

Sixteen-year-old Mary, adopted from Alabama into a wealthy New York family, worries about school, romance, and her sister until she begins turning into a cat. Discovering other shapeshifters draws her into a dangerous conflict between domestics and strays throughout the city.

Twelve darkly comic stories follow women whose domestic lives conceal startling desires and cruelties. Haunted apartments, sinister book clubs, and murderous social occasions turn the familiar rituals of American housekeeping and hospitality into uneasy encounters.

Helen Ellis examines marriage, manners, and womanhood through twenty-three comic essays informed by her Alabama upbringing and New York life. Southern tact provides a framework for handling awkward social encounters, personal vanity, and the expectations placed on women.

Twelve essays explore friendship and middle age through women who have weathered marriages, parenthood, loss, and unsettling health scares together. Helen Ellis uses reunions and everyday encounters to consider the comforts and absurdities of growing older.

Helen Ellis recounts married life in the New York apartment she calls the Coral Lounge. Dinner parties, pandemic routines, television, and private jokes become comic portraits of lasting attraction and intimacy after more than twenty years together.