A hilarious collection of stories from the life of the New York Times bestselling author of Look Again At last, together in one collection, are Lisa Scottoline's wildly popular Philadelphia Inquirer columns. In her column, Lisa lets her hair down, roots and all, to show the humorous side of life from a woman's perspective. The Sunday column debuted in 2007 and on the day it started, Lisa wrote, "I write novels, so I usually have 100,000 words to tell a story. In a column there's only 700 words. I can barely say hello in 700 words. I'm Italian." The column gained momentum and popularity. Word of mouth spread, and readers demanded a collection. Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog is that collection. Seventy vignettes. Vintage Scottoline. In this collection, you'll laugh about: • Being caught braless in the emergency room • Betty and Veronica's Life Lessons for Girls • A man's most important body part • Interrupting as an art form • A religion men and women can worship • Real estate ads as porn • Spanx are public enemy number one • And so much more about life, love, family, pets, and the pursuit of jeans that actually fit! “Scottoline savors every last bit of her life, and so will you.” ― People magazine “Plunging into home improvement frenzy, constructing a chicken coop, figuring out mystifying insurance policies and how not to die at the gym are some of the conundrums this ordinary woman faces with verve and wicked humor, especially how her beloved dogs have contentedly replaced the romance in her life.” ― Publishers Weekly “Scottoline takes the fodder of everyday life and offers witty reflections from a female perspective.” ― Booklist “…shrewd, tart, sensitive and hard to resist.” ― Kirkus Reviews “She has compiled about 70 of the funniest, smartest and most poignant dispatches into one deliciously exuberant collection. What really makes this collection so addictive is Scottoline's way of capturing everyday moments, dissecting them and coming up with unexpected and slightly off-kilter observations about life.” ― Book Page Lisa Scottoline is the New York Times bestselling author of over thirty novels including Look Again, Lady Killer, Think Twice, Save Me and Everywhere That Mary Went . She also writes a weekly column, “Chick Wit,” with her daughter Francesca Serritella, for The Philadelphia Inquirer . The columns have been collected in several volumes, including Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog and My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space . Scottoline has won an Edgar® Award and Cosmopolitan magazine’s “Fun Fearless Fiction” Award, and she served as the president of Mystery Writers of America. She teaches a course on justice and fiction at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater. She lives in the Philadelphia area. Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman By Lisa Scottoline St. Martin's Griffin Copyright © 2010 Lisa Scottoline All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312649432 Excerpt: Of Dogs and Men I’m old enough to remember Ozzie and Harriet, which means that my idea of the nuclear family was born in the 1950s and never quite grew up. By that I mean, a family has a Mommy, a Daddy, and two kids. And a dog. Run, Spot, run! We all know that the nuclear family has changed, but what’s interesting to me is that nobody has just one dog anymore. I’m not sure when it started, but all of the people who used to have a family dog now have family dogs. I myself have a full herd—three golden retrievers and one Pembroke Welsh corgi, who rules us all. Multiple dogs used to be thought of as crazy. Fifteen years ago, when I used to walk two dogs in the city, people asked me if both dogs were mine. Now I walk four and nobody raises an eyebrow. This is true on TV as well. More and more, we see two dogs chowing down in Iams commercials, side-by-side. The Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milan, spends many of his episodes trying to get all of us crazies with multiple dogs to live happily together. So when exactly did people start acquiring multiple dogs? And why? Before you answer, consider another phenomenon, which I sense is related. What caused the nuclear family to blow up was that people started getting divorced like crazy. All of a sudden, the divorces began to pile up. I don’t mean across the country, I mean in one person. People I met had acquired second and third divorces almost as easily as they had acquired second and third dogs. At some point, the third divorce became the new second divorce. No one even bothered to count their first divorce. People didn’t tell their third set of kids about it. It happened so long ago, you could easily forget. Nowadays, even normal people are on their second divorce. People like me, for example. I have two ex-husbands, Thing One and Thing Two. To be honest, I used to be embarrassed about being divorced twice. When people asked me if I was married, I would simply answer, “No, I’m