The ladies' man - Elinor Lipman

A straight-talking comic novel with a silver-tongued anti-hero.

The re-appearance of Nash Harvey on the doorstep of the Dobbin sisters - attractive red-headed spinsters Kathleen, Adele and Lois - thirty years after he deserted Adele on the evening of their engagement party, is the opening of this superb romantic comedy. Debonair and pathologically unreliable, Nash is about to discover that scorned women do not make gracious hostesses.

It's not just Adele who's upset by this incorrigible ladies' man: Lois - the only sister who ever married, to a man she swiftly divorced after finding out his penchant for women's clothes - has always had a crush on Nash. And could it be coincidence that Kathleen finds herself propelled, after all these single years, into the arms of Lorenz, the doorman of the building where she runs a lingerie store?

Full of wit, mischief and elegance, The Ladies' Man is the work of a brilliant comic novelist.