The bestselling author of Getting Over It and Running in Heels, a writer who "excels at creating winning characters and placing them in artfully crafted muddles" (Florida Sun-Sentinel) has created an unforgettable story of siblings in the best of times and the worst of times in London.

Lizbet and Cassie are sisters and, though they've always wanted different things, best friends as well. But that's about to change.

Cassie is skinny, clever, charismatic, successfulevery not-so-perfect girl's worst nightmare. The one defect in her quality-controlled life may be her marriage.

Lizbet is plumper, plainer, dreamier. She's desperate to make her name as a journalist, but is stuck writing embarrassing articles on sex for a men's magazine. Her one achievement is her relationship with Tim, who thinks she's amusing and smarteven when she asks ditzy questions.

Confronted by challenges that they never asked for, enticed by new loves, and forced apart by mistakes not their own, will Cassie and Lizbet ever figure out how to get back to the simple goodness of their sisterhood, even as their lives take them on a collision course of heartache and new beginnings?

"Lizbet and Cassie Montgomery, Jewish sisters in London, seem to like their lives: Lizbet, cute but schlumpy, has a mid-level job at Ladz Mag and a smart, sweet long-term, live-in boyfriend in product designer Tim; barrister Cassie, glossy, smart and hot, is married to fastidious BBC production assistant George Hershlag, which suits her fine. The two sisters have a close if constrained relationship, but when Lizbet announces she's pregnant, Cassie turns cold, even as their parents ('Vivica and Dad') are immediately thrilled. When, 30 or so pages later, Lizbet miscarries the baby in the second trimester, she plunges into despair. Cassie comes to her aid, but it may be too little, too late. Maxted (Behaving Like Adults, etc.) alternates smoothly between Lizbet's and Cassie's perspectives, giving each a distinctive voice and nailing lapsed London Jewry amusingly. When she shifts to Cassie, she handles a series of major revelations with the same emotional acuity that she gives Lizbet's devastation at the loss of her baby. As Lizbet discovers her fabulous side (but perhaps not for the better), what looks from the outside like Cassie's comeuppance is full of crushing sadness. Maxted has to do a lot of wrangling to manage the happy ending, but it offsets this chick lit novel's surprisingly harrowing center. (Aug.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"The British writer Anna Maxted has published five books in roughly six years, with three of them — 'Getting Over It,' 'Running in Heels' and 'Behaving Like Adults' — landing on international best-seller lists. Her latest novel, 'A Tale of Two Sisters,' seems likely to advance her success, as well as her franchise. Maxted's protagonists tend to be familiar chick-lit types — hapless, harried career... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) gals who hold down madcap jobs and wrestle with relationships, and now procreation, amid a surfeit of exclamation points. Her narratives are wrapped around topical themes, resulting in novels that read like some hybrid of 'Sex and the City' and an hour with Dr. Phil.

Maxted has previously tackled such subjects as rape, intimacy and eating disorders; her new novel relates, in alternating first-person voices, the saga of two sisters and the painful matters of miscarriage and adoption. Lizbet, the first to become pregnant, is the more earthy of the pair, with a chaotic but lively household and a seemingly stable relationship. The posh and fastidious Cassie is a successful and ruthless divorce lawyer who drives a Mercedes and requires passengers to remove their shoes before climbing in. The announcement of Lizbet's pregnancy coincides with Cassie's decision to confront the unresolved issues of her own adoption, and therein lies the plot, such as it is.

Maxted is a terrific writer with a droll comedic voice. She excels at creating vivid, believable protagonists, and even her minor characters are full of life, such as the eccentric assortment of relatives who gather on Friday nights for Shabbat dinners. When Lizbet's mother obliviously offends their more religious in-laws by serving cream-of-chicken soup at dinner, Lizbet quips, 'Even half-arsed Jews like us didn't tend to eat meat and dairy produce in the same meal. Even our parents' neighbor, Letty Jackson, who kept a kosher home but ate bacon sandwiches in her car (it was a Saab — I think she thought it neutral territory, like Sweden), drew the line at adding butter.'

Lizbet's emotional tailspin after a miscarriage drives much of the narrative, and anyone who has lost a baby is likely to appreciate her poignant reaction. 'My moron body still thought it was pregnant — it mocked me with two blue lines on the test I did, after. I felt empty — because I was. Like one of those cheap hollow chocolate eggs, what were they called, Kinder Surprise. Surprise, your kinder's dead.' But well-drawn characters like Lizbet are trapped here inside a story where too much of the action hinges on misread signals and the frustrating inability of otherwise articulate people to express themselves.

The formulaic plot may be beside the point, though, since enjoyment of this book is likely to have more to do with one's reaction to the words 'chick lit' than with literary construction. There seems to be an endless 'whither chick lit' debate in blogs and on the pages of book reviews lately. Is the genre dead or alive, and is it an embarrassment to be caught on the subway engaged in a light read? A borderline contentious exchange on a recent Wall Street Journal blog, sparked by a discussion of Emily Giffin's best-seller 'Baby Proof,' had career women bickering about their reading habits, with one participant arguing defensively that her 60-hour-a-week job entitled her to digest some 'mind candy.' Meanwhile, Janet Maslin, writing in the New York Times this summer, declared that chick lit 'appears to be in its death throes,' although an article in the same newspaper exactly three months earlier had reported on its increasing global appeal.

Not yet out of her thirties, Maxted seems to be evolving stylistically, with this effort being sharper and more emotionally complex than the early books that established her name. Already something of a grand dame of the genre, she probably doesn't waste much time fretting about the musings of industry trend spotters, or the sorts of labels that are slapped on her books.

Susan Coll's third novel, 'Acceptance,' will be published next March." Reviewed by Susan Coll, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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The fabulous new novel from the bestselling author of Being Committed.

They were the best of friends, they were the worst of friends . . . Cassie and Lizbet are sisters. They are very different and believe they want different things in life. But just how different are they? Cassie's discovery that she's adopted has fuelled her desire to have a baby — the fact that she's having marital problems is an inconvenience she's choosing to ignore.

When her sister Lizbet — indifferent to children at the best of times — falls pregnant by mistake, the sisters' relationship is severely compromised. Lizbet, who doesn't know Cassie is adopted, cannot understand why Cassie isn't more pleased for her. Then, Lizbet miscarries and tries to come to terms with the trauma by concentrating on her career. She seems to be okay, but what is left is an overriding resentment towards her sister.

And when temptation takes them both away from their homes it is not only their own relationship that is challenged. At war, little do they realize they have more in common than they think . . .

Anna Maxted is a freelance writer and the author of the international bestsellers Getting Over It, Running in Heels, Behaving Like Adults, and Being Committed.