Sarah Pekkanen (These Girls)
Best-selling author Jodi Picoult calls Sarah Pekkanen’s third novel, These Girls (Washington Square Press, 2012), “at turns bittersweet, laugh-out-loud funny, and painfully real”—in other words, the perfect beach read. The book tells the stories of three women who work at a high-end lifestyle magazine in New York City and “packs a big surprise at the end,” Pekkanen says.
The Bethesda Magazine columnist and Chevy Chase resident likes to write about the complexity of women’s relationships, but says none of her work is autobiographical. “I take bits and pieces of conversations with friends and feed them through a kaleidoscope to form my characters,” the 45-year-old says. Her fourth novel, The Best of Us, will be published in April. Just in time to take to the beach.
