A sharp, funny, delightfully unhinged collection of stories set in the dark world of domesticity, American Housewife features murderous ladies who lunch, celebrity treasure hunters, and the best bra fitter south of the Mason Dixon line. Meet the women of American Housewife: they wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These twelve irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam, from the gallery opening of a tinfoil artist to the fitting room of a legendary lingerie shop. Vicious, fresh, and nutty as a poisoned Goo Goo Cluster, American Housewife is an uproarious, pointed commentary on womanhood.

American Housewife: Stories

Literature & Fiction

Ellis, Helen

Humor & Satire

DOUBLEDAY

"I loved it." —Ann Patchett The bestselling author of American Housewife ("Dark, deadpan and truly inventive." --The New York Times Book Review) is back with a fiercely funny collection of essays on marriage and manners, thank-you notes and three-ways, ghosts, gunshots, gynecology, and the Calgon-scented, onion-dipped, monogrammed art of living as a Southern Lady. Helen Ellis has a mantra: "If you don't have something nice to say, say something not-so-nice in a nice way." Say "weathered" instead of "she looks like a cake left out in the rain." Say "early-developed" instead of "brace face and B cups." And for the love of Coke Salad, always say "Sorry you saw something that offended you" instead of "Get that stick out of your butt, Miss Prissy Pants." In these twenty-three raucous essays Ellis transforms herself into a dominatrix Donna Reed to save her marriage, inadvertently steals a $795 Burberry trench coat, witnesses a man fake his own death at a party, avoids a neck lift, and finds a black-tie gown that gives her the confidence of a drag queen. While she may have left her home in Alabama, married a New Yorker, forgotten how to drive, and abandoned the puffy headbands of her youth, Helen Ellis is clinging to her Southern accent like mayonnaise to white bread, and offering readers a hilarious, completely singular view on womanhood for both sides of the Mason-Dixon.

Southern Lady Code: Essays

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light: Essays

The bestselling author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code returns with a viciously funny, deeply felt collection of essays on friendship among grown-ass women. When Helen Ellis and her lifelong friends arrive for a reunion on the Redneck Riviera, they unpack more than their suitcases- stories of husbands and kids; lost parents and lost jobs; powdered onion dip and photographs you have to hold by the edges; dirty jokes and sunscreen with SPF higher than they hair-sprayed their bangs senior year; and a bad mammogram. It's a diagnosis that scares them, but could never break their bond. Because women pushing fifty won't be pushed around. In these twelve gloriously comic and moving essays, Helen Ellis dishes on married middle-age sex, sobs with a theater full of women as a psychic exorcises their sorrows, gets twenty shots of stomach bile to the neck to get rid of her double chin, and gathers up the courage to ask, "Are you there, Menopause? It's Me, Helen." A book that reads like the best cocktail party of your life, Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light is chockablock with fabulous characters- cat-lady plastic surgeons and waterpark Adonises; bridge ladies and poker players; platinum medallion fliers and Garage Sale Swindlers; forty-year-old divorcees; fifty-year-old new moms and still-young octogenarians. Alive with the sensational humor and ferocious love for her friends that won Helen Ellis legions of fans, this book has a raw vulnerability and an emotional generosity that takes this acclaimed author to a whole new level of accomplishment.

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage

Even twenty years into marriage, Helen Ellis’s husband still makes her heart pitter patter. The New York Times bestselling author paints a portrait of true romance for our times in these surprising, sexy, and hilariously frank essays about love, marriage, and her last first kiss.\n"Ellis is one of our greatest living humorists, in the same league as Sedaris and Irby...A fascinating portrait of middle-aged love.” —Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward\nWelcome to the Coral Lounge, a room in Helen Ellis’s New York City apartment painted such an exuberant shade that a Peeping Tom left a sticky note asking for the color. It is in the Coral Lounge where all the parties happen: A game called “What’s in the box?” makes its uproarious debut, the Puzzle Posse pounces on a 500-piece jigsaw of a beheaded priest, and guests don blindfolds for a raucous bridal shower.\nWhen the pandemic shuts down the city, the Coral Lounge becomes a place of refuge, where Helen and her husband binge-watch Joan Collins’s Dynasty, dote on two spoiled cats, and where Helen discovers that even twenty years into marriage, her husband still makes her heart pitter patter.

What is it truly like being a son or daughter who leaves home to live in an expat/migrant setting? How does it feel to be geographically separated from your parents, grandparents and other family members? Maybe you’ve left home for your studies, your career, a sense of adventure, for a challenge, for love. But how do you venture forth into your global world and still retain and nourish connections with ‘home’, always knowing “it was my choice to leave”?\nResearcher, anthropologist and founder of DistanceFamilies.com, Helen Ellis, shares ideas, resources and stories to arm readers with the wisdom to maintain rich and fulfilling relationships with their Distance Family. You’ll come away refreshed and rebooted knowing that you can all be close – despite the distance.\nIf you are a parent, grandparent or extended family member living back home, are you proud and graciously accepting of your family’s move or do you harbour feelings of resentment? All reactions and emotions are normal. This book will make a difference to your Distance Family.\nWith knowledge comes understanding 
With understanding comes empathy 
And empathy is a good thing for Distance Families.\nBeing a Distance Son or Daughter – a Book for ALL Generations is the second part of a three-book series.

Being a Distance Son or Daughter: A Book for ALL Generations (Distance Families)

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Distance Families Publishing

A collection of essays that are "like being seated beside the most entertaining guest at a dinner party" (Atlanta Journal Constitution)—from the New York Times bestselling author of American Housewives\n“Thank you Helen Ellis for writing down the Southern Lady Code so that others may learn.” —Ann Patchett, bestselling author of The Dutch House\nHelen Ellis has a mantra: “If you don't have something nice to say, say something not-so-nice in a nice way.” Say “weathered” instead of “she looks like a cake left out in the rain” and “I’m not in charge” instead of “they’re doing it wrong.”\nIn these twenty-three raucous essays, Ellis transforms herself into a dominatrix Donna Reed to save her marriage, inadvertently steals a Burberry trench coat, avoids a neck lift, and finds a black-tie gown that gives her the confidence of a drag queen. While she may have left Alabama for New York City, Helen Ellis is clinging to her Southern accent like mayonnaise to white bread, and offering readers a hilarious, completely singular view on womanhood for both sides of the Mason-Dixon.

Anchor

The bestselling author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code returns with an “inspiring, hilarious, straight-to-the-point” (Entertainment Weekly) collection of essays on friendship among grown-ass women.\n"Ellis' prose is filled with so many laugh lines, you might want to go ahead and book the Botox.” —NPR\nWhen Helen Ellis and her lifelong friends arrive for a reunion on the Redneck Riviera, they unpack more than their suitcases: stories of husbands and kids, lost parents and lost jobs, powdered onion dip and photographs you have to hold by the edges, dirty jokes and sunscreen with SPF higher than they hair-sprayed their bangs senior year, and a bad mammogram. It's a diagnosis that scares them, but could never break their bond. Because women pushing fifty won't be pushed around.\nIn these twelve gloriously comic and moving essays, Helen Ellis dishes on married middle-age sex, sobs with a theater full of women as a psychic exorcises their sorrows, gets twenty shots of stomach bile to the neck to get rid of her double chin, and gathers up the courage to ask, "Are you there, Menopause? It's Me, Helen."\nA book that reads like the best cocktail party of your life, Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light is alive with the sensational humor and ferocious love for her friends that won Helen Ellis legions of fans. This book has a raw vulnerability and an emotional generosity that takes this acclaimed author to a whole new level of accomplishment.

Product Description 
The bestselling author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code returns with a viciously funny, deeply felt collection of essays on friendship among grown-ass women.\nWhen Helen Ellis and her lifelong friends arrive for a reunion on the Redneck Riviera, they unpack more than their suitcases: stories of husbands and kids; lost parents and lost jobs; powdered onion dip and photographs you have to hold by the edges; dirty jokes and sunscreen with SPF higher than they hair-sprayed their bangs senior year; and a bad mammogram. It's a diagnosis that scares them, but could never break their bond. Because women pushing fifty won't be pushed around.\nIn these twelve gloriously comic and moving essays, Helen Ellis dishes on married middle-age sex, sobs with a theater full of women as a psychic exorcises their sorrows, gets twenty shots of stomach bile to the neck to get rid of her double chin, and gathers up the courage to ask, "Are you there, Menopause? It's Me, Helen."\nA book that reads like the best cocktail party of your life, 
Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light is chockablock with fabulous characters: cat-lady plastic surgeons and waterpark Adonises; bridge ladies and poker players; platinum medallion fliers and Garage Sale Swindlers; forty-year-old divorcées; fifty-year-old new moms and still-young octogenarians. Alive with the sensational humor and ferocious love for her friends that won Helen Ellis legions of fans, this book has a raw vulnerability and an emotional generosity that takes this acclaimed author to a whole new level of accomplishment. 
 Review 
SOUTHERN BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A New York Post Best New Book to Read • A Garden and Gun Best Book of the Year • A New York Times New and Noteworthy Book • A PureWow Best Beach Read • 
A Buzzfeed Book to Read this Summer • A People Best Book of the Week\n“Sharply funny… Ellis has clearly found her stride — or, in her case, her strut. The writer who so memorably opened 
American Housewife with a Beyoncé-inspired 'stallion walk to the toaster' is indeed noticeably unbridled and self-assured in this collection… The spirit of Nora Ephron… hovers over this book… Ellis' prose is filled with so many laugh lines, you might want to go ahead and book the Botox… Ellis is a hoot. She's also a force… She has come to own the power of her personality — and her work.” 
 —Heller McAlpin, 
NPR"Despite how often I type the letters 'LOL,' it actually takes a lot for me to laugh out loud. But I found myself doing so at least once a chapter while reading the Alabama native Helen Ellis’s new essay collection, 
Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light... Hilarious." 
—Amanda Heckert, 
 Garden and Gun\n"As with everything written by the Alabama-born novelist who gave us 
Southern Lady Code, this collection of twelve essays is equal parts irreverent and poignant—a mirthful toast to friendship at middle age." 
— 
Southern Living 
"Helen Ellis has done it again. And by it, we mean she's pulled together her thoughts on life's disparate moments and produced an inspiring, hilarious, straight-to-the-point essay collection."\n—Entertainment Weekly"Ellis is a humorist, a writer with a sharp eye for finding the funny in any situation... Secrets are exactly what make Ellis’s essay collection fun. She doesn’t hold back... A little bit naughty, but also self-aware... She writes without fear of exposing her own vulnerabilities, of putting on display for everyone to see what many people would want to hide, and in that willingness, what emerges feels real and genuine."\n—Southern Review of Books\n"You gotta love a middle-aged gal who enjoys the 'good ole-boy adonises' at a water park in Georgia, plays professional poker in her pearls and speculates with her chagrined husband about her friends’ sex lives ('Those two have costumes'). Ellis is as original as she is hilarious, and in these laugh-out-loud essays she unleashes her no-holds-barred humor while sneaking in sharp and generous in

Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light: Essays (Random House Large Print)

Random House, Large Print

Even twenty years into marriage, Helen Ellis's husband still makes her heart pitter patter. The New York Times bestselling author paints a portrait of true romance for our times in these surprising, sexy, and hilariously frank essays about love, marriage, and her last first kiss. "Ellis is one of our greatest living humorists, in the same league as Sedaris and Irby...A fascinating portrait of middle-aged love." --Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward Welcome to the Coral Lounge, a room in Helen Ellis's New York City apartment painted such an exuberant shade that a Peeping Tom left a sticky note asking for the color. It is in the Coral Lounge where all the parties happen: A game called "What's in the box?" makes its uproarious debut, the Puzzle Posse pounces on a 500-piece jigsaw of a beheaded priest, and guests don blindfolds for a raucous bridal shower. When the pandemic shuts down the city, the Coral Lounge becomes a place of refuge,&nbsp;where Helen and her husband binge-watch Joan Collins's Dynasty, dote on two spoiled cats, and where Helen discovers that even twenty years into marriage, her husband&nbsp;still makes her heart pitter patter.

Vintage

New York Times bestselling author Helen Ellis paints a portrait of true romance for our times in these surprising, sexy, and hilariously frank essays about love, marriage, and her last first kiss.\n"Ellis is one of our greatest living humorists, in the same league as Sedaris and Irby...A fascinating portrait of middle-aged love.” —Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward\nWelcome to the Coral Lounge, a room in Helen Ellis’s New York City apartment painted such an exuberant shade that a Peeping Tom left a sticky note asking for the color. It is in the Coral Lounge where all the parties happen: A game called “What’s in the box?” makes its uproarious debut, the Puzzle Posse pounces on a 500-piece jigsaw of a beheaded priest, and guests don blindfolds for a raucous bridal shower.\nWhen the pandemic shuts down the city, the Coral Lounge becomes a place of refuge, where Helen and her husband binge-watch Joan Collins’s Dynasty, dote on two spoiled cats, and where Helen discovers that even twenty years into marriage, her husband still makes her heart pitter patter.

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage (Random House Large Print)

Diversified Publishing

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

Books by Ellis, Helen

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

American Housewife: Stories

Southern Lady Code: Essays

Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light: Essays

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage

Being a Distance Son or Daughter: A Book for ALL Generations (Distance Families)

Southern Lady Code: Essays

Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light: Essays

Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light: Essays (Random House Large Print)

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage

Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage (Random House Large Print)