The Wedding People

The runaway New York Times bestseller with over one million copies sold A Today Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick, New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, and a #1 Indie Next Pick Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, Time, Chicago Tribune Biblioracle, HuffPost, US Magazine, Elle, Real Simple, and Glamour A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew. It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn't here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she's dreamed of coming for years-she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she's here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan-which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can't stop confiding in each other. In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach's The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined-and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

Alison Espach is the bestselling author of The Wedding People, a New York Times Editor's Choice, a Today Show Read With Jenna Book Club Pick, a Barnes and Noble Book Club Pick, and a #1 Indie Next Pick. The Wedding People spent several dozen weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list and will be published in over 35 countries. She is also the author of Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, a Chicago Tribune and NPR "Best Book of the Year," as well as The Adults, a New York Times Editor's Choice and Barnes and Noble Discover Pick. Her fictional audio series In-Depth Market Research Interviews with Dead People is an Audible Original. She has written for McSweeney's, Vogue, Outside, LitHub, Joyland and other places. She lives and teaches creative writing in Rhode Island. Alison received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. She has been a writer-in-residence at the Ucross Foundation for the Arts, Millay Arts, The Wassaic Project, the Cuttyhunk Writers Residency and the San Miguel Literary Sala.