#1 New York Times bestselling author! A New York Times Best Seller! Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Best Fiction of 2014! An Indie Next Pick! IF YOU GOT A SECOND CHANCE AT LOVE, WOULD YOU MAKE THE SAME CALL? As far as time machines go, a magic telephone is pretty useless. TV writer Georgie McCool can't actually visit the past -- all she can do is call it, and hope it picks up. And hope he picks up. Because once Georgie realizes she has a magic phone that calls into the past, all she wants to do is make things right with her husband, Neal. Maybe she can fix the things in their past that seem unfixable in the present. Maybe this stupid phone is giving her a chance to start over ... Does Georgie want to start over? From Rainbow Rowell, the New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park and Fangirl , comes this heart-wrenching - and hilarious - take on fate, time, television and true love. Landline asks if two people are ever truly on the same path, or whether love just means finding someone who will keep meeting you halfway, no matter where you end up. “The magic phone becomes Ms. Rowell's way to rewrite ‘It's a Wonderful Life'…what that film accomplished with an angel named Clarence, Ms. Rowell accomplishes with a quaint old means of communication, and for her narrative purposes, it really does the trick.” ― The New York Times “While the topic might have changed, this is still Rowell--reading her work feels like listening to your hilariously insightful best friend tell her best stories.” ― Library Journal, starred review on Landline “Her characters are instantly lovable, and the story moves quickly…the ending manages to surprise and satisfy all at once. Fans will love Rowell's return to a story close to their hearts.” ― Kirkus Reviews on Landline “Rowell is, as always, a fluent and enjoyable writer--the pages whip by.” ― Publishers Weekly on Landline “Keen psychological insight, irrepressible humor and a supernatural twist: a woman can call her husband in the past.” ― Time Magazine on Landline “The dialogue flows naturally; it's zippy, funny, and fresh. The flirtation between young Georgie and Neal is genuinely romantic.” ― Boston Globe “After the blazing successes of Eleanor & Park , Fangirl and Attachments , it's become clear that Rowell is an absolute master of rendering emotionally authentic and absorbing stories...While the novel soars in its more poignant moments, Rowell injects the proper dose of humor to keep you laughing through your tears.” ― RT Book Reviews on Landline “To skip her work because of its rom-com sheen would be to miss out on the kind of swift, canny honesty of that passage, which is typical of the pleasures of Landline -- it's a book that's a joy from sentence to sentence, and on that intimate level there's absolutely nothing unoriginal or clichéd in the way Rowell thinks. Her work is dense with moments of sharp observation…and humor.” ― Chicago Tribune Printers Row “But a focus on the endings is the wrong one when you're reading a book of Rowell's. What matters most are the middles, which she packs with thoughtful dissections of how we live today, reflections upon the many ways in which we can love and connect as humans, and tacit reassurances of the validity of our feelings regardless of our particular experiences.” ― Slate.com on Landline “ Landline might not have any teenage protagonists, but it does have all the pleasures of Rowell's YA work -- immediate writing that's warm and energetic” ― Time.com “More gentle, more real than Douglas Coupland, more smooth and also more clever than Helen Fielding. Truly, slowly, sweetly gorgeous.” ― The Globe & Mail Rainbow Rowell is the award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park and the Simon Snow Trilogy, plus several other novels, short stories, and comics. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska, just like most of her characters. Landline A Novel By Rainbow Rowell St. Martin's Press Copyright © 2015 Rainbow Rowell All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-250-04954-4 CHAPTER 1 Georgie pulled into the driveway, swerving to miss a bike. Neal never made Alice put it away. Apparently bicycles never got stolen back in Nebraska—and people never tried to break in to your house. Neal didn’t even lock the front door most nights until after Georgie came home, though she’d told him that was like putting a sign in the yard that said PLEASE ROB US AT GUNPOINT. “No,” he’d said. “That would be different, I think.” She hauled the bike up onto the porch and opened the (unlocked) door. The lights were off in the living room, but the TV was still on. Alice had fallen asleep on the couch watching Pink Panther cartoons. Georgie went to turn it off and stumbled over a bowl of milk sitting on the floor. There was a stack of laundry folded on the coffee table—she grabbed whatever was on the top to wipe it up. When Neal stepped into the archway between the living room and t