Can a little black dress help a New York magazine editor live out her wildest fantasies . . . or will it be her downfall? Magazine editor Jane Avery spends her nights alone with Netflix and Oreos-until the Dress turns her loose. Suddenly she's surrendering to dark desires, and New York City has become her erotic playground. But what began as a fantasy will go too far . . . and her next conquest could be her last. BookShots Lightning-fast stories by James Patterson Novels you can devour in a few hours Impossible to stop reading All original content from James Patterson

“A darkly funny novel about betrayal, loneliness and the surprising pleasure of being single again” from the author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Good Housekeeping). At sixty-nine years old, Pru has found herself alone for the first time in her life. Her grown children are out of the house, and her husband, Greg, has filed for divorce. She attributes Greg’s betrayal to a cancer scare and a more-than-midlife crisis, but that doesn’t make her feel any better—or less lonely. It seems that nothing—not even her eccentric, free-spirited best friend, Azra—can pull her out of her depression. Until Pru sees a black dress in a thrift store window . . . Its sleek silhouette calls to mind long-gone days of cocktail parties and sophisticated conversation. And it gives Pru a brilliant idea: where better to wear a black dress—and find age-appropriate single men—than at a funeral? As Pru combs through the obituaries and attends masses and wakes, she finds comfort among the bereaved. After all, they’re all grieving someone they have lost. But Pru’s about to discover that though her new dating plan may get her out of the house and back on the market, the life she’s so desperately trying to leave behind isn’t done with her yet . . . “With dry wit and observation, Moggach tackles the perils of ageing with brutal honesty.” —Daily Express “This page-turner is like the best wakes, it will make you feel hungry and alive.” —The Times (London) “As ever with Moggach, the joy is in her witty observations of middle-class life and bracingly tart portrayal of family relationships.” —Daily Mail

In the spirit of Anne Lamott and Nora Ephron comes Janze's hilarious and moving memoir about a woman who returns home to her close-knit Mennonite family after a personal crisis.

Slaves to Fashion is a pioneering cultural history of the black dandy, from his emergence in Enlightenment England to his contemporary incarnations in the cosmopolitan art worlds of London and New York. It is populated by sartorial impresarios such as Julius Soubise, a freed slave who sometimes wore diamond-buckled, red-heeled shoes as he circulated through the social scene of eighteenth-century London, and Yinka Shonibare, a prominent Afro-British artist who not only styles himself as a fop but also creates ironic commentaries on black dandyism in his work. Interpreting performances and representations of black dandyism in particular cultural settings and literary and visual texts, Monica L. Miller emphasizes the importance of sartorial style to black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora. Dandyism was initially imposed on black men in eighteenth-century England, as the Atlantic slave trade and an emerging culture of conspicuous consumption generated a vogue in dandified black servants. “Luxury slaves” tweaked and reworked their uniforms, and were soon known for their sartorial novelty and sometimes flamboyant personalities. Tracing the history of the black dandy forward to contemporary celebrity incarnations such as Andre 3000 and Sean Combs, Miller explains how black people became arbiters of style and how they have historically used the dandy’s signature tools—clothing, gesture, and wit—to break down limiting identity markers and propose new ways of fashioning political and social possibility in the black Atlantic world. With an aplomb worthy of her iconographic subject, she considers the black dandy in relation to nineteenth-century American literature and drama, W. E. B. Du Bois’s reflections on black masculinity and cultural nationalism, the modernist aesthetics of the Harlem Renaissance, and representations of black cosmopolitanism in contemporary visual art.

Michael Anderson was an ordinary person, who lived an ordinary life. He had been married for six years and had two lovely daughters. He worked as an insurance agent in a popular insurance firm, living in Fairfield, Connecticut. One day Michael came home to find a letter written to him from his wife. She had packed the kids and moved out of state and did not tell him where. Underneath the note were divorce papers signed by her, and their divorce was final without his appearance. Michael did not know why she divorced him. When he left for work, everything between them were fine. The next daybaffled, confused, and puzzledMichael goes in to work only to find that he had been fired without reason. Michael gets home, checks his mail, and finds a foreclosure letter. His house had been confiscated by the bank, and he had thirty days to move. The next day, he leaves his house to look for work. His car had been repossessed by the car company. Out of work, no car, and out of money, Michael turns to his best friend, Andrew Barler, a shift manager at a tire factory in Bridgeport. Andrew agrees to help Michael and offers him to move with him and his family in Bridgeport. It is until then that Michael finds out what friends are really for when he discovers his best friend is not the person he grew up with or knew from years ago. And as the days pass, he slowly discovers the terrifying secrets of Andrew Barler and the factory he works and why things are not what they seem.