Confessions of a Rebel Debutante

Confessions of a Rebel Debutante -- A delicious, laugh-out-loud funny Southern-fried memoir about growing up a "proper young lady"...or not.

A strict regimen of Southern-belle grooming should have prepared Anna Fields for a lifetime of ladylike behavior.

But it didn't.

As it turned out, Anna-a smart, outspoken, bookish girl- was a dud at debbing. After being kicked out of cotillion classes, the "Rebel Deb" left North Carolina to seek her fortune. Her first stop was Brown University-right in the heart of Yankee-land-and then the crazy world of Hollywood talent agencies and celebrity-packed restaurants. After a disastrous stint as Diana Ross's personal assistant, Anna headed off to the Big Apple, where she worked for one of Bravo's Real Housewives. It's a rollicking, unlikely success story from a natural-born story­teller.

Sharp, sweet, and sassy, Confessions of a Rebel Debutante proves you can take the girl out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the girl!

The Best of Friends: Martha and Me

Totally reading this after I finish what I'm currently reading...will be great for vacation in a couple weeks and it's available on the Kindle!

The Best of Friends: Martha and Me -- Set in a world of luxury and power, this is the story of two remarkable women and a friendship that changed both their lives forever.

For more than two decades, Mariana Pasternak and Martha Stewart were nearly inseparable. They first met over a garden gate in Westport, Connecticut, two suburban wives wedded to successful men but with grand aspirations of their own. Their bond only deepened after their marriages ended in divorce. Struggling as a single mother, but drawn into a seductive world of privilege and adventure, Pasternak watched with admiration as her friend built an empire that would make her one of the richest women in America.

A European ÉmigrÉ with sophisticated tastes, Pasternak helped to smooth Stewart's rough edges, while Stewart drew Pasternak into a rarefied world, where together they navigated the sometimes hilarious and often difficult challenges of being single. The depth of their friendship not only benefited them both but also influenced how they defined themselves, through good times and bad. Friendship between women is never simple and this one was no exception.

With Stewart's newfound success and Pasternak's zest for adventure, the two women's friendship was based on their mutual quest for wonder and discovery. They rode horses through the desert dunes of Egypt, hiked the winding Inca Trail to the mysterious Machu Picchu, paddled at night in dugout canoes through the Amazonian jungle. They toasted the good life with thin-stemmed champagne glasses and sipped “jade dew" green tea in Martha's Turkey Hill kitchen. This was no ordinary life.

As time passed, money, men, and the arrogance of wealth frayed the bonds they had built so carefully over more than twenty years. The final break came when Pasternak was called as a witness in the high-profile trial that brought about Stewart's conviction and prison sentence. Pasternak's deeply personal memoir tells the story of their friendship with honesty and candor, reflecting on the power of such intense relationships to change our lives, and the devastating aftermath when those relationships end.

Liz Claiborne

Liz Claiborne: The Legend, The Woman

Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger -- A celebrated novelist, Lee Smith is likewise recognized as a master of the short story and has been compared with such luminaries as Katherine Ann Porter, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor. Now she collects fourteen stories—seven brand-new ones along with seven favorites from her three earlier collections. The result? A book of dazzling richness.

Famous for unmistakable voices and a craft so strong and sure it seems effortless, Lee Smith’s stories strike dead center at the turning points of her characters’ lives. Here those characters range from an eight-year-old boy obsessed with vocabulary words to a young bride who has married "way up" to Mrs. Darcy herself, an older woman making it through widowhood her own way. As the New York Times Book Review put it, "In almost every one of [her stories] there is a moment of vision, or love, or unclothed wonder that transforms something plain into something transcendent."

With this collection—her first in thirteen years—Smith reclaims her place as the reigning queen of the bittersweet short story.

True Prep: The Preppy Handbook Sequel

It's about time! Pre-order True Prep: It's a Whole New Old World now, it will be released August 10th!

From the author of The Official Preppy Handbook comes a new take on the old world that Lisa Birnbach turned into an international best-selling phenomenon thirty years ago.

True Prep looks at how the old guard of natural-fiber-loving, dog-worshipping, G&T-soaked preppies adapts to the new order of the Internet, cell phones, rehab, political correctness, reality TV and . . . polar fleece.

A small sample:

• Wardrobe: Recent prep brands we are forced to recognize. How to tell Casual Friday from, say, Saturday.
• Money: We never talk about it.
• Food: Does the Food Network mean we’re going to have to cook? Bake? Now you’re going too far.
• Scandals: Poor Mrs. Astor. When Mummy’s plastic surgery goes terribly wrong. Rehab and the slammer: the new prep schools.
• We’re outta here: When to name something after yourself, and when not. The right obituary. What to do with your dogs if you predecease them.
• NO TEXTING AT THE TABLE, PLEASE.

True Prep promises to be a whole new old sensation.

Take Ivy (Re-Issue)

Preppy style — otherwise known as "trad" — has been having a major menswear moment, thanks to designers like Michael Bastian and a host of Web sites celebrating the blazer-and-button-down look of the 1950s and '60s. Behind the renewed interest is a cultish book called Take Ivy, a collection of photographs taken at Ivy League campuses first published in Japan in 1965 but rarely available in the U.S. (copies have sold for upwards of $1,500 on eBay). We've just heard that Take Ivy will be reissued in August by powerHouse Books with an English translation and a far more affordable price tag, leaving plenty to splurge on a $600 pair of Michael Bastian shorts. {via W Mag}

Even though the book will not be released until August, you can pre-order now via Amazon.

Someone Will Be with You Shortly by Lisa Kogan: Book Cover * Someone Will Be with You Shortly: Notes from a Perfectly Imperfect Life

Someone Will Be with You Shortly: Notes from a Perfectly Imperfect Life-- Lisa Kogan is a forty-nine-year-old single woman who maintains that every human being deserves a great mattress, a comfortable pair of shoes, and a very smart shrink, and that no one has grown a decent tomato since 1963. She used to think the world wasn't all that complicated, but along came AIDS and crack and Rush Limbaugh, and she had to think again. Still, she's nostalgic for that time when you had to walk all the way across the room to change channels and there was no such thing as a spy satellite capable of spotting a precancerous mole on her left thigh.

In Someone Will Be with You Shortly, Kogan grapples with issues big (her six-year-old daughter, Julia, and the 8,000 miles that separate them from Julia's father) and small (her recent apartment renovation, which consisted of turning over the sofa cushions and then realizing that they looked better the other way) with the self-deprecating humor and deep appreciation for what really matters that have made her column in O, The Oprah Magazine so beloved. Here is a book for anyone who has ever been unnerved by pleather pants, lunch meat, or ambivalent men (not necessarily in that order), but believes that life is a fragile bit of luck well worth living.

Yves Saint Laurent

Yves Saint Laurent -- One of the most distinctive and influential designers of the second half of the twentieth century, Yves Saint Laurent takes his place in the pantheon of French couturiers, alongside Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, and Jeanne Lanvin. Yves Saint Laurent, the first comprehensive retrospective of his life’s work, will accompany an exhibition of some 250 garments from the collection of the Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent at the Petit Palais in Paris.

From his early days working under Dior and heading the House of Dior after his mentor’s death, to the opening of his first prêt a porter shop on the Rive Gauche and the debut of the Le Smoking tuxedo, to the muses he adored, Loulou de la Falaise and Catherine Deneuve among them, this volume reveals the breadth and scope of the designer’s entire career. With a preface by Pierre Bergé, author Faride Chenoune explores the sources of inspiration that drove Saint Laurent’s continuous innovation, drawing upon painting, sculpture, theater, opera, literature, and cinema.