ALMOST, Elizabeth Benedict's fourth novel, is "her most spirited to date" (New York Times Book Review). Forty-something narrator Sophy Chase has just begun a lighthearted, romantically adventurous life in New York City when she learns that her almost ex-husband has been found dead on the New England resort island where she left him just months before. Lured back to the island by feelings she thought she had left behind, Sophy must navigate treacherous emotional terrain involving her grown stepdaughters, a former lover who is now a celebrity lawyer, the mystery of her husband's death -- and her own darkest impulses.
Elizabeth Benedict is a highly regarded novelist, journalist, teacher of creative writing, editor, and writing coach. She has published five acclaimed novels, including the bestseller ALMOST, a classic book on writing fiction, and hundreds of reviews, essays, and magazine articles. She is the editor of the celebrated anthology, MENTORS, MUSES & MONSTERS: 30 WRITERS ON THE PEOPLE WHO CHANGED THEIR LIVES (Excelsior Press, Feb. 2012/Simon & Schuster 2009).
NEWSWEEK and Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan chose her novel, the bestseller ALMOST, as one of the top novels of 2001. Her novels have established her reputation as a writer who "specializes in the subterranean currents of modern relationships, the secret motivations and betrayals that underlie everyday interactions" (Newsday). Hallie Ephron in the Boston Globe called her most recent novel, THE PRACTICE OF DECEIT, "a wickedly funny literary suspense novel" that is "wry, at times heartbreaking, always smart and entertaining." Newsday's reviewer said that Benedict's "wit is as sharp as her eye, and twice as fast. She writes the hard, horrifying truth about human nature, and it is addictively entertaining."
Her first novel, SLOW DANCING, published in 1985, was shortlisted for the National Book Award. She is also the author of several other novels and of a classic book, THE JOY OF WRITING SEX: A GUIDE FOR FICTION WRITERS, which is used widely in writing programs and has been featured on radio shows in the UK and Australia.
She has taught fiction and non-fiction writing at Barnard, the New School, Princeton, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Swarthmore College, and MIT and has written for many publications, including The Huffington Post, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Salmagundi, Esquire, Tin House,Harper's Bazaar, and The American Prospect.
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