How do we live without the ones we love? After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Sloane Crosley looks for answers in philosophy and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief. For most of her adult life, Sloane and Russell worked together and played together as they navigated the corridors of office life, the literary world, and the dramatic cultural shifts in New York City. One day, Sloane's apartment is broken into. Along with her most prized possessions, the thief makes off with her sense of security, leaving a mystery in its place. When Russell dies exactly one month later, his death propels Sloane on a wild quest to right the unrightable, to explore what constitutes family and possession as the city itself faces the staggering toll of the pandemic.

One night in New York City's Chinatown, a woman is at a work reunion dinner with former colleagues when she excuses herself to buy a pack of cigarettes. On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. And then another. And…another. Soon nothing is quite what it seems as the city becomes awash with ghosts of heartbreaks past. What would normally pass for coincidence becomes something far stranger as our heroine, the recently engaged Lola, must contend not only with the viability of her current relationship but the fact that both her best friend and her former boss, a magazine editor turned mystical guru, might have an unhealthy investment in the outcome. Is it possible to have a happy ending in an age when the past is ever at your fingertips and sanity is for sale?

Fans of I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE CAKE and HOW DID YOU GET THIS NUMBER know Sloane Crosley's life as a series of relatable but madcap misadventures. In LOOK ALIVE OUT THERE, whether it's scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on “Gossip Girl,” befriending swingers, or squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight.

Kezia, Nathaniel and Victor are reunited at the extravagant wedding of a college friend. During the reception, an inebriated Victor passes out in the mother of the groom's bedroom. He's woken with a jovial slap to the face, as she dangles a story about a missing necklace before him, one that she has never even told her son. Her tale sets in motion a madcap adventure that leads Victor, Kezia and Nathaniel from Miami to New York and L.A., and ultimately across France, to the estate of Guy de Maupassant, author of the classic short story "The Necklace."