Melinda LeBlanc, at 30, makes an untriumphant return to Harrow, Massachusetts, her recently gentrified hometown. She’s unmarried, romanced out, designing wedding bouquets for old classmates who hadn't known a fraction of her early popularity. So why is she alone—not counting the occasional horizontal encounter—while these dull brides have found men and happiness? Libby Getchel, who designs strange dresses in the shop next door, and Dennis Vaughan, a native son who owns the hip Brookhoppers, a fly fisherman's paradise, provide friendship in mutating forms. The Way Men Act explores age-old quandary: Can you every truly go home again? Find out in this “wise and charming novel” ( Cosmopolitan ). After trying out her adult wings in California, Melinda LeBlanc has come home to work for her cousin arranging flowers. Out of place and outdated, she befriends Libby, who designs strange dresses in the shop next door, and Dennis Vaughan, a native son and very attractive black man who owns the hip Brookhoppers, a fly fisherman's paradise. Libby aims to marry Dennis. Melinda tries to keep her dignity as an un-degreed lonely woman in a college town. And Dennis wants--what? Lipman is a modern-day Jane Austen and her characters crackle with wit and intelligence. "With The Way Men Act , Elinor Lipman emerges as a full-fledge talent, a witty, compassionate chronicler of modern sensibility, wise without beating the reader over the head with her insights....Written in spare, sparkling prose, with not a flat or dragging millisecond." — Michael Dorris in the Boston Globe "Elinor Lipman's language is so superb that to paraphrase would be murder. Part of the joy of this wise and charming novel is in the writing. The rest is in the thinking—smart, offbeat, funny. What a pleasure." — Cosmopolitan "In a league with Jane Austen... Elinor Lipman's eye for social geography instantly infatuates, just as the screwball plot charms with its basic tenet of successful courtship: location, location, location." — Glamour Elinor Lipman is the award-winning author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Inn at Lake Devine , Isabel’s Bed , and more. Her first novel, Then She Found Me, was adapted into a film directed by and starring Helen Hunt, with Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick. She divides her time between Manhattan and the Hudson Valley. Fiction Humor