Dorothy Parker's quips and light verse have embedded themselves in the American literary landscape, but it was her prose that proved her star and demonstrated her talent as extending far beyond her time. In her fiction, she not only brought to life the urban milieu that was her bailiwick, but lay bare the uncertainties of ordinary people living ordinary lives, all told in her unflinching and deeply personal voice. In these selected stories, read for you by Elaine Stritch, we have the chance to draw upon her insight into the social and emotional realities of human nature.

She was known for her outrageous one-liners, her ruthless theater criticism, her clever verses and bittersweet stories. But there was another side to Dorothy Parker, a private life set on a course of destruction.

Meet Julie Chavan. Julie is trying to rescue the legendary New York publishing house West 57. Everyone else in her life is trying to rescue Julie - her mother, her ex-fiancé, her ex-best friend, and even the ghost of her dead father. They all think they know what Julie needs. What Julie actually needs is a big best seller for West 57, but her debut of the year's hottest book is spinning wildly out of control.

Theirs was a marriage made in tabloid heaven, but no sooner had supermodel Laura Ayars and Celtics star David Baskin said “I do” than tragedy struck. While honeymooning on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, David went out for a swim - and never returned. Now widowed and grieving, Laura has a thousand questions and no answers. Her search for the truth will draw her into a web of lies and deception that stretches back thirty years - while on the court at the Boston Garden, a rookie phenom makes his spectacular debut....

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.

Katherine Nichols knew she’d had too many drinks, but they were only going a short distance. “There’s no traffic anyway,” Eve had pointed out. And they'd had such a great night out, the two of them. Even now, driving them home and knowing she shouldn’t, seemed almost mischievous. All part of the fun. Not anymore.

Sutton and Ethan Montclair's idyllic life is not as it appears. They seem made for each other, but the truth is ugly. Consumed by professional and personal betrayals and financial woes, the two both love and hate each other. As tensions mount, Sutton disappears, leaving behind a note saying not to look for her. Ethan finds himself the target of vicious gossip as friends, family, and the media speculate on what really happened to Sutton Montclair.

As a teenage runaway and child of an addict, Christy-Lynn learned the hard way that no address was permanent, and no promise sacred. For a while, she found a safe haven in her marriage to bestselling crime novelist Stephen Ludlow - until his car skidded into Echo Bay. But Stephen’s wasn’t the only body pulled from the icy waters that night. When details about a mysterious violet-eyed blonde become public, a media circus ensues, and Christy-Lynn runs again.

Ren Sawyer and Lizzy Harper live completely different lives. He's a rock star with a secret he can no longer live with. She's a regular person whose husband stood her up for a long-planned anniversary trip. On a flight across the Atlantic headed for Italy, a drunken pity party and untimely turbulence literally drop Lizzy into Ren's lap. It is the last thing she can imagine ever happening to someone like her. But despite their surface differences, they discover an undeniable pull between them. A pull that leads them both to remember who they had once been before letting themselves be changed.

From behind the wheel of her car, Tess Kincaid glimpses a woman walking down a Madison, Wisconsin, street. They've never met, but Tess sees the same features every time she looks in the mirror. Tess introduces herself and discovers that she and her doppelganger, Mimi, have more than appearance in common. They even share the same birthday. Mimi - confident and outgoing where Tess is understated and shy - is convinced they're twins, separated shortly after birth. When a body is discovered in a local marsh, Tess is entangled in a search for the truth....

In the vein of John le Carré and Graham Greene, this contemporary international thriller follows Milo Weaver as he is drawn into a conspiracy that links riots in the Sudan, an assassin committing suicide, and an old friend who's been accused of selling secrets to the Chinese. Once the CIA and Homeland Security are after him, the only way for him to survive is to return, headfirst, into Tourism.

Two hundred years after her death, Jane Austen is still surrounded by the literature she loves, but now it's because she's the owner of Flyleaf Books in a sleepy college town in Upstate New York. Every day she watches her novels fly off the shelves along with dozens of unauthorized sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations. Jane may be undead, but her books have taken on a life of their own.

Aspiring author Graye Templeton will do anything to escape the horrific childhood crime that haunts her. After a life lived in shadows, she’s accepted a new job as protégé to Laura West, influential book blogger and wife of an acclaimed novelist. Laura’s connections could make Graye’s publishing dreams a reality. But there’s more to Laura than meets the eye. Behind the veneer of a charmed life, Laura’s marriage is collapsing. Her once-lauded husband is descending into alcoholism and ruin and bringing Laura nearer to the edge.

A lifetime ago, every year Carole Shipley looked forward to her wedding anniversary. But then a celebratory trip to Mexico for the occasion with her husband and friends ended in the unsolved kidnapping of her infant daughter, Samantha. Now, 15 years after that horrific time, divorced and isolated, Carole is forced to relive the kidnapping by reporters who call every year on the anniversary of Samantha's disappearance.

Beatrice Johnson Greene, a bestselling crime writer, has an unusual favor to ask. When a chance encounter brings Emma Fern into her life, she thinks she's found just the person for the job. Soon Beatrice will wish they'd never met. For Emma, desperate to please, it's an offer she can't refuse. All she has to do is lend her name to Beatrice's next novel, her first in a new genre. But when the book becomes a huge triumph, Emma finds herself the toast of the literary world.