"Wives Like Us made me laugh so hard I actually knocked over my lamp. Can a book be so wickedly smart, so effortless, so chic and hilarious that you would stumble through the night to find a new lightbulb just so you can keep reading way past your bedtime? In a word, yes."

Kevin Kwan

Take a grand English country house, one (heartbroken) American divorcee, three rich wives, two tycoons, a pair of miniature sausage dogs and one (bereaved) butler; put them all into the blender and out comes the impossibly funny Wives Like Us, the new novel from the best-selling author of Bergdorf Blondes and Party Girls Die In Pearls, Plum Sykes.

If you think the English countryside is all green wellies, muddy Land Rovers and grey-haired ladies in tweed, then you've never visited 'The Bottoms.'

Welcome to the rose-strewn county of Oxfordshire, and the tony Cotswold villages of Little Bottom, Middle Bottom, Great Bottom, and Monkton Bottom, recently annexed by a glittering new breed of female: the Country Princess.

Following a ghastly row about a missing suite of diamonds, Tata Hawkins has flounced out of Monkton Bottom Manor with her daughter, Minty, and Executive Butler Ian Palmer in tow, decamping to The Old Coach House to teach her husband Bryan a lesson.

But things don't go to plan: Bryan disappears to Venice with a bikini designer; Selby Fairfax, the glamorous American divorcée who has inherited the beautiful estate next door, is refusing Tata's overtures at friendship; Tata's best friends, Sophie Thompson and Fernanda Ovington-Williams, are distracted by their own heartache, and the posh Pennybacker-Hoare sisters are plotting to prevent Tata regaining her crown as Queen of the Bottoms. Worst of all, Ian has nowhere to store his collection of vintage Gucci loafers.

Will Tata ever return to the comforts of the Manor? Will Selby find her Prince Charming? Will the Pennybacker-Hoares prevail? With the help of a pig farmer-ess moonlighting as a Personal Assistant, a male model moonlighting as a stable hand and a London barrister moonlighting as a gentleman farmer, can Ian restore harmony to The Bottoms?

"WIVES LIKE US may be set in the most gorgeous English manor house, but I'd happily sleep in the shed if it meant I could tag along with these marvelous characters-Tata, Minty, and their chic and crafty butler."

Jenny Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street

"A forensically well-observed narrative....will it do for the Cotswolds what F. Scott Fitzgerald did for the Hamptons....a shiny satirette of country living where everyone is unmuddied but filthy rich."

The Times (London)

"Floats like cherry blossom onto a chalk stream. . . . Sykes has chosen a rich (as in minted) target, and she is well-equipped to take aim. . . . When it comes to the lifestyles of the UHNWs (ultra-high-net-worths) of Poshtershire, she knows. And she certainly can write. . . . Some novels make one's mouth water because descriptions of food saturate their pages like butter-soaked muslin. Here it's clothes. Designer clothes. . . . It's cleverly structured, very well-written and has a delicious, knowing ending."

The Spectator (UK)
 

Ladenpreis Deutschland € 18,70

ISBN 9780062429087

HarperCollins

Sprache Englisch