Acceptance: A Novel

Acceptance is a satire of America's overachievers, a novel set over one year in the college application process, when students and parents surrender their evenings, their weekends, and their sanity to the race for admission. Maya, Taylor, and "AP" Harry (so named for all the advanced placement courses under his belt) are high school students in a Washington, D.C. suburb called Verona, each gunning for admission to the most prestigious colleges. Olivia is an overworked admissions officer, under siege from applications and every kind of desperate appeal. The application process threatens to overrun all of their lives, and Acceptance follows each character's struggle for their sanity against the relentless pressure of competition.

Literature & Fiction

Coll, Susan

Humor & Satire

Picador

Ah, Beach Week: a time-honored tradition in which the D.C. suburbs' high school grads flock to Chelsea Beach for seven whole days of debauchery. In this dark comedy, ten teenage girls plan an unhinged blowout the likes of which their young lives have never seen. They smuggle vodka in water bottles and horde prescription drugs by the dozen. Meanwhile, their misguided, affluent parents are too busy worrying about legal liabilities to fret over some missing pills or random hookups.
With the wit of Nora Ephron and the insight of Tom Perrotta, Susan Coll satirizes a teenage rite of passage, in the process dissecting the lives of families in transition.

Beach Week: A Novel

United States

Ah, “beach week”: a time-honored tradition in which the D.C. suburbs’ latest herd of high school grads flocks to Chelsea Beach for seven whole days of debauched celebration. In this dark comedy, ten teenage girls plan an unhinged blowout the likes of which their young lives have never seen. They smuggle vodka in water bottles and horde prescription drugs by the dozen. Meanwhile, their misguided, affluent parents are too busy worrying about legal liabilities to fret over some missing pills or random hookups. For Jordan Adler and her family, though, this rite of passage threatens to become more than just frivolous fun. The teen’s parents, Leah and Charles, might not let their only child go at all. Their marriage is in shambles, their old house is languishing on the market, and the bills are stacking up. With all that stress, it soon seems they’re behaving as irresponsibly as their daughter and her friends. With the wit of Nora Ephron and the insight of Tom Perrotta, Susan Coll satirizes a new teenage rite of passage, in the process dismantling the lives of families in transition. Beach Week is a hilarious, well-observed look at the end of childhood and the human need to commemorate it—expensively.

Sarah Crichton Books

A comic chronicle of a year in the life in the college admissions cycle. It's spring break of junior year and the college admissions hysteria is setting in. "AP" Harry (so named for the unprecedented number of advanced placement courses he has taken) and his mother take a detour from his first choice, Harvard, to visit Yates, a liberal arts school in the Northeast that is enjoying a surge in popularity as a result of a statistical error that landed it on the top-fifty list of the U.S. News &amp; World Report rankings. There, on Yates's dilapidated grounds, Harry runs into two of his classmates from Verona High, an elite public school in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There's Maya Kaluantharana, a gifted athlete whose mediocre SAT scores so alarm her family that they declare her learning disabled, and Taylor Rockefeller, Harry's brooding neighbor, who just wants a good look at the dormitory bathrooms. With the human spirit of Tom Perrotta and the engaging honesty of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, Susan Coll reveals the frantic world of college admissions, where kids recalibrate their GPAs based on daily quizzes, families relocate to enhance the chance for Ivy League slots, and everyone is looking for the formula for admittance. Meanwhile, Yates admissions officer Olivia Sheraton sifts through applications looking for something--anything--to distinguish one applicant from the next. For all, the price of admission requires compromise; for a few, the ordeal blossoms into an unexpected journey of discovery.

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

The Stager is a comedy of rabbits and real estate in the D.C. suburbs from Susan Coll, the author of Acceptance and Beach Week
Dominique is one very bitter rabbit. His owner, Lars Jorgenson, is a former tennis pro who has blown out both knees, become obese, and is now addicted to a cocktail of prescription drugs containing the letters X and Z, one weird side-effect of which is that he has developed an omniscient point of view. Both Dominique and Lars are going crazy in the affluent Maryland suburbs where their faux Tudor home is up for sale. Idle on the market for months, the home is now being staged: A professional has come in to redecorate and depersonalize the house so that others can imagine themselves living there. Into the messy personal life of Lars and his beautiful wife Bella comes Eve, an unemployed journalist-turned stager who immediately realizes, as she steps into the foyer, that she is in the home of her former best friend. Eve knows way too much about Bella, including the questionable paternity of the meddling young child who lives in this house. Questions of friendship, loyalty, fidelity, sobriety, and sanity are raised to hilarious effect in this dark comedy of how we live now in the age of planned communities, cookie-cutter mansions, and cutthroat careerism.

The Stager: A Novel

A graduate student's life begins to parallel the subject of her thesis project--a portrait of Karl Marx's daughter, Eleanor--as she becomes embroiled in a relationship with Nigel Lark, a wonderful if possibly married ornithologist. A first novel. 25,000 first printing.

karlmarx. com: A Love Story

Simon&Schuster

Rockville Pike: A Suburban Comedy of Manners

Jane Kramer never imagined a life selling discount furniture and commuting between grocery stores and soccer fields via minivan. But when her father-in-law has a heart attack, she and her husband, Leon, trade in their glamorous New York life for a stint running the family business on Rockville Pike, a tributary of the suburban sprawl line extending outward from Washington, D.C. Kramer's Discount Furniture Depot sits away from several lanes of traffic, near the tombstone of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is here that Jane escapes each day at lunchtime to ponder her confusing turn in life. 
 At age forty-one, she has a teenage Goth son, her husband is increasingly overweight and quick-tempered, and their business is in a state of crisis, both financially and legally. Jane finds herself wishing for something more. First, add to the mix Delia, a mysterious and strangely predatory patio-furniture saleswoman who seems to have her sights set on Leon, and then an attack on the store expansion plans by historic preservationists. When potentially disturbing findings about Delia's past come to light, Jane finds herself learning that, despite life's reversals, it is possible to reinvent herself by tapping into talents and desires she didn't realize she still had. 
 Rockville Pike is a smart, witty, and funny read that revels in the joy of discovering what life has in store.

Jane Kramer never imagined a life selling discount furniture and commuting between grocery stores and soccer fields via minivan. But when her father-in-law has a heart attack, she and her husband, Leon, trade in their glamorous New York life for a stint running the family business on Rockville Pike, a tributary of the suburban sprawl line extending outward from Washington, D.C. Kramer's Discount Furniture Depot sits away from several lanes of traffic, near the tombstone of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is here that Jane escapes each day at lunchtime to ponder her confusing turn in life.
At age forty-one, she has a teenage Goth son, her husband is increasingly overweight and quick-tempered, and their business is in a state of crisis, both financially and legally. Jane finds herself wishing for something more. First, add to the mix Delia, a mysterious and strangely predatory patio-furniture saleswoman who seems to have her sights set on Leon, and then an attack on the store expansion plans by historic preservationists. When potentially disturbing findings about Delia's past come to light, Jane finds herself learning that, despite life's reversals, it is possible to reinvent herself by tapping into talents and desires she didn't realize she still had.
Rockville Pike is a smart, witty, and funny read that revels in the joy of discovering what life has in store.

A New York Times Book Review and Chicago Tribune Editors' Choice
As a stager, Eve Brenner orchestrates the quick cosmetic fixes that make a house desirable to a prospective buyer. But when she steps into the home of an investment banker and her tennis-star husband, the Stager realizes that she knows too much about one of the house's occupants: The wife, beautiful and brilliant Bella, was once her best friend.
While Bella's life has followed a steady upward trajectory, Eve's has unraveled-and she isn't the only one struggling with Bella's success. Lars Jorgenson was a handsome Wimbledon finalist when he first met his wife. Now he is depressed, obese, and slowly coming undone on prescription medications. Their ten-year-old daughter, Elsa, is dealing with multiple losses: her parents are preparing to move the family overseas, her rabbit has run away, and she soon will be separated from her beloved nanny. Lonely and vulnerable, she bonds with the Stager while her parents are away assessing the family's next home-and forges a new friendship that gives everyone cause for concern. A dark comedy of real estate and rabbits, The Stager questions matters of friendship, family, and loyalty to hilarious effect.

A perfect storm of comedic proportions erupts in a DC bookstore over the course of one soggy summer week--narrated by two very different women and punctuated by political turmoil, a celestial event, and a perpetually broken vacuum cleaner. Independent bookstore owner Sophie Bernstein is burned out on books. Mourning the death of her husband, the loss of her favorite manager, her only child's lack of aspiration, and the grim state of the world, she fantasizes about going into hiding in the secret back room of her store. Meanwhile, renowned poet Raymond Chaucer has published a new collection, and rumors that he's to blame for his wife's suicide have led to national cancellations of his publicity tour. He intends to set the record straight--with an ultra-fine-point Sharpie--but only one shop still plans to host him: Sophie's. Fearful of potential repercussions from angry customers, Sophie asks Clemi--bookstore events coordinator, aspiring novelist, and daughter of a famed literary agent--to cancel Raymond's appearance. But Clemi suspects Raymond might be her biological father, and she can't say no to the chance of finding out for sure. This big-hearted screwball comedy features an intergenerational cast of oblivious authors and over-qualified booksellers--as well as a Russian tortoise named Kurt Vonnegut Jr.--and captures the endearing quirks of some of the best kinds of people: the ones who love good books. Praise for Bookish People: "A smart, original, laugh-out-loud novel . . . If you sell, buy, or simply love books, Bookish People is for you. I wholeheartedly recommend this quirky gem." --Sarah Pekkanen, New York Times bestselling co-author of The Golden Couple <ul> <li>Witty, hilarious, and heartwarming contemporary book about books</li> <li>Stand-alone novel</li> <li>Book length: approximately 84,000 words</li> <li>Includes discussion questions for book clubs</li> </ul>

Bookish People

Harper Muse

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Coll, Susan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Coll, Susan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Coll, Susan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Acceptance: A Novel

Beach Week: A Novel

Beach Week: A Novel

Acceptance: A Novel

The Stager: A Novel

karlmarx. com: A Love Story

Rockville Pike: A Suburban Comedy of Manners

Rockville Pike: A Suburban Comedy of Manners

The Stager: A Novel

Bookish People