My life as a villainess - Laura Lippman

I knew something new about venality - my own. I realized I had become the bad guy in someone else's story.
And I deserved it.

Laura Lippman's first job in journalism was a rookie reporter in Waco, Texas. Two decades later she left her first husband, quit the newspaper business, and became a full time novelist.

I had been creating villains on the page for about seven years when I finally became one.

Her fiction has always centered on complicated women, paying unique attention to the intricacies of their flaws, their vulnerability, and their empowerment. Now, finally, Lippman has turned her gimlet eye on a new subject: herself.

My daughter was ten days old the first time I was asked if I were her grandmother.

In this, her first collection of essays, Lippman gives us a brilliant, candid portrait of an unapologetically flawed life. Childhood, friendships, influences, becoming a mother in later life - Lippman's inspiring life stories are at once specific and universal.

Laura Lippman's novels have won many crime fiction prizes, including the Edgar, Anthony and Agatha Awards. Sunburn (2018), her second consecutive novel to win the eDunnit Award at Crimefest, was also nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger Award and was a Waterstones Book of the Month. Her most recent novel Lady in the Lake (2019) featured in numerous Best of Year Lists. To find out more about Laura visit www.lauralippman.com

Candid and quirky, this book will have special appeal to fans of her crime fiction. A wryly observed collection from a reliably good writer.
Kirkus

She revels in confession and connection, surprise and provocation, and she performs all with panache, wisdom, wit, and courage. Lippman asserts: "I'm a tough old bird," and readers will declare: and one helluva true-tale teller.
Booklist

The essays, some new, some previously published, are overall a delight...Fans of Lippman's novels (Lady in the Lake) and her Twitter followers will gobble up this short collection and beg for more nonfiction from this gifted storyteller.
Library Journal

Lippman is funny and sharp at her best; she can sling a hell of a one-liner.
New York Times

Lippman's clear-eyed assessment of aging puts My Life as a Villainess on the same shelf as Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck . . . A keen reminder that the former reporter, whose novels are often based on real events, is hardly a newcomer to nonfiction and its uncomfortable truths.
Los Angeles Times

Lippman has a sharp wit and a sensitivity to power dynamics that make her books compulsively readable . . . Now, in her debut essay collection, Lippman comes clean about her own misdeeds [and] is unrepentant in arenas where women, especially, are often held suspect.
Publishers Weekly

My Life as a Villainess couldn't be more timely . . . These are personal essays, witty and poignant and thoughtful, about Lippman's life. One theme that runs through them is her hard-earned knowledge that many of the things our culture expects of women - likability among them - can be traps.
Chicago Tribune

With its 'gleefully honest' hits of humor and willingness to take a close look at some discomfiting truths, it will come as no surprise to Lippman's fans that My Life as a Villainess is an engaging read-an intrepid investigation of the author's inner landscape...
BookPage