My Life as a Villainess

Essays

New York Times bestselling
author Laura Lippman, a journalist for many years, collects here her recent
essays exploring motherhood as an older mom, her life as a reader, her
relationships with her parents, friendship, and other topics that will resonate
with a large audience. Her voice is wry
and relatable, her takes often surprising.

Meet the Woman Behind
the Books…

In this collection of new and previously published essays, New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman offers her
take on a woman's life across the decades. Her childhood and school years, her newspaper
career, her experiences as a novelist—Lippman finds universal touchstones in an
unusual life that has as many twists as her award-winning crime fiction.

Essays include:

· Men Explain
The Wire to Me

· Game of
Crones

· My Life as
a Villainess

· My Father’s
Bar

· The 31st Stocking

These candid essays offer long-time readers insight into the
experiences that helped Lippman become one of the most successful crime
novelists of her generation.

Compelling, self-aware, thought-provoking

Author narration is hit or miss. Laura Lippman is a hit. She’s got a beautiful voice. In the Texas section, her narration has a twang and swagger that I stumbled over, but she was clearly having a good time reading. She really knocks the narration out of the park… I listened to this almost straight through. I struggle with her writing about age and beauty and femininity – we’re just on very different pages about these topics, but I think a lot of readers will connect, I was extremely moved by the friend-breakup essay. The frank ways in which this author depicts her flaws and shortcomings is refreshing. I’m so glad I read this book.

I’m a villainess too.

I liked the moments when it felt like she was speaking to us rather than reading it to us. Since they were her essays, it seemed like it would come from her in a more story telling way than her reading a script. More conversational. But the stories were well written and very entertaining. I related to many parts and enjoyed hearing them.