The Fine Art of Mixing Girls

A highball comedy of manners, this novel is a return to the days of too much gin and too many cigarettes. Hapless reporter Roosevelt P. Lane lives in the grandeur and glamour of New York circa 1953—an era of quiz-panel programs, debutantes and dinner jackets, communists, pickpockets, and artists manqué—where he finds the city to be incredibly huge until he attempts to date two women at once. Now he must decide which is the one for him: Harley Molloy, the lovable but ingenuous Hollywood starlet, or Claire Bannerman, the erudite, freethinking progressive who is about to land him in a world of intrigue. Dripping with vintage culture, this is a highly entertaining story of a bygone age, full of humor and romance that moves along as quickly as the famed New York hustle.