What do Stephen King and Gossip Girl have in common, you ask? Perhaps more than we know, but today we’d like to say thank you to both of these cultural icons for their recent public displays of support!

Stephen King gives a shout out to A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick on page 342 of his new novel, 11/23/63. The passage reads: “I’d read a book called ‘A Reliable Wife’ not too long before leaving on the world’s strangest trip, and as I climbed into bed, a line from the novel crossed my mind: ‘He had lost the habit of romance.’ That’s me, I thought as I turned out the light.”

And Gossip Girl teased out a pregnancy plot with the mysterious appearance of a little-known book by Heidi Murkoff, called What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

Where, oh, where will we spot a Workman book next?

An Apple iPad showed up in the office the other day. Even with all the hype, we were impressed. It radiated that “you’ve got to have it” vibe that Apple’s perfected.

The iPad’s owner, a Brazilian freelance videographer with little connection to Workman, had only two ebooks in his library, but, serendipitously, one of them was What to Expect When You’re Expecting. He explained, laughing, that he and his girlfriend planned to have a baby in about three years. Maybe that’s how it’s done in Sao Paulo. Anyway, he was a proud Apple fanboy and urged us to walk his newest acquisition around.

It was quite something. The iPad’s screen is large and bright, the type looks crisp, the pages turn irresistibly with a swipe of the finger. It can be read in a landscape position, two pages open at a time, like a book, or vertically, which has the no-nonsense feel of reading something on a clipboard. Another Apple virtue: no experience was necessary. We knew without being told how to navigate the book and the device. After browsing around What to Expect, we returned to the virtual wooden bookshelves (looking a little empty; his only other book was Winnie the Pooh, perhaps part of his three-year plan) and then visited the iBookstore to search for and order a sample from another in-house bestseller, A Reliable Wife. A 52-page chunk arrived in seconds. We wondered if our Brazilian friend would like the steamy novel.

“A tantalizing pace that will have you flipping faster and faster through the pages…A beautiful and haunting read…”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

A page-turner full of suspense and twists, A Reliable Wife is all over must-read lists and was featured on the Today show’s “Ten must-reads for Spring” and NPR’s independent booksellers best summer reads. Scroll down to read the first chapter.

More about A Reliable Wife
Read a note from Chuck Adams, Executive Editor, Algonquin Books