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A Novel
by Edan Lepucki
A sinister, sexy noir about art, motherhood, and the intensity of female friendships, set in the posh hills above Los Angeles, from the New York Times bestselling author of California
High in the Hollywood Hills, writer Lady Daniels has decided to take a break from her husband. Left alone with her children, she's going to need a hand taking care of her young son if she's ever going to finish her memoir. In response to a Craigslist ad, S arrives, a magnetic young artist who will live in the secluded guest house out back, care for Lady's toddler, Devin, and keep a watchful eye on her older, teenage son, Seth. S performs her day job beautifully, quickly drawing the entire family into her orbit, and becoming a confidante for Lady.
But in the heat of the summer, S's connection to Lady's older son takes a disturbing, and possibly destructive, turn. And as Lady and S move closer to one another, the glossy veneer of Lady's privileged life begins to crack, threatening to expose old secrets that she has been keeping from her family. Meanwhile, S is protecting secrets of her own, about her real motivation for taking the job. S and Lady are both playing a careful game, and every move they make endangers the things they hold most dear.
Darkly comic, twisty and tense, this mesmerizing new novel defies expectation and proves Edan Lepucki to be one of the most talented and exciting voices of her generation.
"Always enjoyable if not always believable, this novel succeeds by staying light on its feet. Or, as one character puts it, 'Please don't monetize my bunny.'" - Kirkus
"Lepucki's (California) brisk style and arresting characterizations make for a compelling portrait of womanhood in the present moment, right down to its intriguing integration of social media." - Publishers Weekly
"Woman No. 17 is a brilliant follow-up to California and a twisty, emotionally complicated noir about art, motherhood and mysteries without any easy answers." - Shelf Awareness
"In Woman No. 17, Lepucki has crafted an intricate, gripping story of people behaving very badly. You will want to race to the end to see what happens, but don't cheat yourself. This book deserves to be savored –gorgeously written, darkly comic, smart and thrilling." - Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of The Nest
"Woman No. 17 fizzes with references to contemporary culture and sparks with larger, timeless questions: Where is the line between performance and identity? What separates life from art? And can we ever escape the gravitational pull of our parents? Edan Lepucki shows herself to be a sharp-eyed chronicler of our modern world." - Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You
"Woman No. 17 is a provocative and timely meditation on art, authenticity and representation in a digital age. The increasingly gripping plot suggests the outcomes of a thriller, but at the crucial moment the novel swerves toward subtly profound truths about our capacity for self-sabotage and self-reinvention, the power of trauma to shape lives, and the inexorable gravity of family secrets. Lepucki's smooth prose and deft handling of point of view reveal a writer fully in command." - Matthew Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves
"Taut as a thriller (with plenty of sex and secrets), Woman No. 17 raises big questions about identity, art, ethics, parenthood, and more. In Edan Lepucki's hands, the philosophical is transformed into a page turner; I don't know how she does it." - Rumaan Alam, author of Rich & Pretty
This information about Woman No. 17 was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Bader Howar
Edan Lepucki is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels California and Woman No. 17, as well as the editor of Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of our Mothers As We Never Saw Them. Her nonfiction has been published in the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire Magazine, and The Cut, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.
Author Interview
Link to Edan Lepucki's Website
Name Pronunciation
Edan Lepucki: EE-dehn luh-PUCK-ee
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