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Debut novelist Laura Jacobs joins an elite group of authors (Jane Austen, Nancy Mitford, Diane Johnson) whose novels celebrate intelligent, modest, witty, and endearingly funny women. Iris Biddle is forty years old and determined to take it gracefully. What she'd really like is to wake up one morning with all errands done, her posh custom-lampshade business ahead of schedule, and absolutely no worries. Lana Burton is a young theater critic moving up the New York hierarchy, but she's learning that some friends resent a slow climb as much as a fast one. The setting is Manhattan, but women everywhere can identify with Iris and Lana as they struggle to keep friendships afloat, the checkbook balanced, the career moving, and the morale up, not to mention achieving their dreams while staying true to themselves.