Girls' Night Out (Red Dress Ink)

25 stories from the hottest female writers on the scene.

Too tired to doll up and head out for a night on the town? (It happens to the best of us.) Just dip into this year's must-read collection for a Girls' Night Out to remember and indulge in tales of reunions and weddings, sisters and friends, endings and beginnings.... No waiting in line, no wardrobe malfunctions, no jockeying for position as you try to catch the bartender's eye. With a lineup of fantastic writers like Meg Cabot (The Boy Next Door), Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed), Kristin Gore (Sammy's Hill), Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus (The Nanny Diaries), Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez (The Dirty Girls Social Club) and Lolly Winston (Good Grief), you'll be hanging with the VIPs all night long!

Net proceeds to benefit War Child and No Strings.

Unfortunately, this title is not available to Canadian residents.

The 25 stories in this anthology (following Girl's Night In) come from the shiniest names in chick lit, and most seem dedicated to making frustrated singles feel like their lives are very, very normal. The hilarious "Ladies' Night at Underwood Pet Hospital" by Nicki Earls features a local TV news anchor trying to meet the guy next door by being "completely charming" in her nightly broadcast and "sending him a telepathic message that went, 'Watch my news... watch my news...' " Chris Manby's offering, "Saving Amsterdam," is a sexy European exercise in getting over "the Bastard Ex." Lauren Henderson's "Last Waltz" is an introspective slow dance of miscommunication and insecurity between lovers at the fair. Tales from the wed side can also be found, like editor Mlynowski's "A Little Bit Broken" ("I am the kind of woman whose husband cheats on her at a bachelor party") and Lolly Winston's "Only Some People," an incongruous story about a middle-aged couple (with nary a Cosmopolitan in sight). Though uneven, fans of the genre won't be disappointed, and the net proceeds go to charities overseas. (June)
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The second Red Dress Ink fiction anthology features today's hottest chick-lit writers, including Marian Keyes, Anna Maxted, Laura Caldwell, and The Nanny Diaries (2002) authors Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus Meg Cabot's offering is the epistolary (twenty-first-century style, of course) "Reunion," in which two friends reluctant to attend their 10-year high-school reunion find unexpected motivation. Nina, the heroine of Emily Giffin's romantic "A Thing of Beauty," listens to her manicurist-numerologist, makes three drastic changes in her life, and meets a man who intrigues her but appears to be unavailable. She soon learns appearances can be deceiving. Kristin Gore's clever, funny "Stray" features a lonely, quirky narrator who decides to pick up a hitchhiker. Cecelia Ahern's "The End" tells a breakup story without a happy ending backward. Girls' Night Out is a riveting collection definitely worth a night in. Kristine Huntley
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