Single Girls: A Novel

An infectious and utterly charming fictionalization of the iconic Helen Gurley Brown’s early years at the helm of Cosmopolitan, and the intrepid group of women she took under her wing to create one of the most talked about magazines of all time.

In 1965, Helen Gurley Brown, a soft spoken, self-professed “mouseburger,” is fresh off the runaway success of her book Sex and the Single Girl, a revolutionary call to single women urging them not to rush into marriage on anyone’s timeline but their own, and, even more radically, to enjoy their sex lives, gloriously free of shame. Upon the book’s publication, half the country is outraged (her mother, for one, hates the book), and the other half will follow her anywhere. Moved by the thousands of letters arriving at her doorstep from readers desperate for advice, she marches from one Manhattan magazine conglomerate to another, looking for a perch from which to dispense her unconventional wisdom. At her last stop, she finally gets her shot: just three issues to turn around the flailing magazine Cosmopolitan.

Helen quickly assembles a team of smart, savvy single girls up to the task. Soon, their lives become the stuff of magazine cover lines: the gorgeous Book Editor’s doomed romance with a man she didn’t know was married—and her bold idea for revenge. The (unofficial!) Sex Editor’s trip to soak in the world’s first champagne glass hot tub, which takes a very wrong turn. The Entertainment Editor’s clash with Joan Crawford and interview with a Park Avenue call girl that leads to unexpected revelations.

Single Girls begins at the dawn of Helen’s legendary tenure and journeys back to her youth, envisioning the devastations and people who forged her into a controversial legend. It imagines the way one unsinkable group of women navigated gender roles and workplace power dynamics long before these issues entered the headlines. With dazzling, high-energy prose, it recreates not just a movement, but a mood: one of ambition, reinvention, and the intoxicating thrill of being young when a new world was possible for a single girl if only she was fearless enough to reach out and grab it.

“Single Girls is an irresistibly fun, sparkling novel that you'll want to binge in one night! John Searles crafts a brilliant portrait of the glamorous, visionary woman who made the culture catch up with American women's real lives—and all the blood, sweat and tears it actually took.” –Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians

"A poignant and rollicking good time...Readers will laugh out loud and shed a tear or two." -Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone and The River is Waiting

"Single Girls is effervescent and wry, a sparkling literary cocktail that catapults you back to the glittering chaos of Cosmopolitan’s heyday. With Helen Gurley Brown at its fearless center and a kaleidoscope of unforgettable women orbiting around her, this novel is both a madcap delight and a sharp reminder of how hard-won every inch of progress has been. John Searles has pulled off a dazzling feat." -Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train and The Foursome