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Editorial Content for A Sociopath's Guide to a Successful Marriage

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Pamela Kramer

With A SOCIOPATH’S GUIDE TO A SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGE, M.K. Oliver delivers a shining example of a novel that is so clever and filled with really funny lines that we can't help but root for the main character, who also happens to be a sociopath.  Read More

Teaser

Lalla Rook has a lot on her to-do list: help her husband make partner by flattering his masculinity, secure her dream home in Hampstead, get her daughter into private school, host her four-year-old’s birthday party, and remove the dead body from her living room. Lalla can’t pretend she hasn’t missed the adrenaline rush that comes with transgressing. And, as a wife and mother, she’s already an expert multitasker. So disposing of a body, framing a friend and being the world’s best homemaker should be easy to achieve. It’s just that her husband seems distracted, her daughter faces an uncertain academic future, and then there is the unexpected intruder in her living room, a stranger she has stabbed seven times. Avoiding the law is the least of her worries --- not when she has a past to keep hidden.

Promo

Lalla Rook has a lot on her to-do list: help her husband make partner by flattering his masculinity, secure her dream home in Hampstead, get her daughter into private school, host her four-year-old’s birthday party, and remove the dead body from her living room. Lalla can’t pretend she hasn’t missed the adrenaline rush that comes with transgressing. And, as a wife and mother, she’s already an expert multitasker. So disposing of a body, framing a friend and being the world’s best homemaker should be easy to achieve. It’s just that her husband seems distracted, her daughter faces an uncertain academic future, and then there is the unexpected intruder in her living room, a stranger she has stabbed seven times. Avoiding the law is the least of her worries --- not when she has a past to keep hidden.

About the Book

A good mother will kill for her family. And, sometimes, for fun in this “wickedly dark and hilarious debut” (Alice Feeney, New York Times bestselling author of MY HUSBAND'S WIFE).

Meet Lalla Rook. Lalla has a lot on her to-do list: help her husband make partner by flattering his masculinity, secure her dream home in Hampstead, get her daughter into private school, host her four-year-old’s birthday party, and remove the dead body from her living room.

Lalla can’t pretend she hasn’t missed the adrenaline rush that comes with transgressing. And, as a wife and mother, she’s already an expert multitasker. So disposing of a body, framing a friend and being the world’s best homemaker should be easy to achieve.

It’s just that her husband seems distracted, her daughter faces an uncertain academic future, and then there is the unexpected intruder in her living room, a stranger she has stabbed seven times. Avoiding the law is the least of her worries --- not when she has a past to keep hidden.

Brimming with brio, humor and just a dash of murder, A SOCIOPATH'S GUIDE TO A SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGE introduces a brilliant new anti-heroine in “the most wildly entertaining novel you'll read this year” (A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW).

Audiobook available, read by Perdita Weeks

July 10, 2026 - July 24, 2026

Here are reading recommendations with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars for the contest period of July 10 - July 24.

July 10, 2026

Last weekend, when the temperature hit 102 degrees, I retreated to the pool where the water was a glorious 83 degrees. I love reading in the water. I stood poolside with my book, and when I wanted to aqua jog in the deep end, I switched over to an audiobook. Occasionally I had to fight the Polaris, which sweeps the bottom of the pool and wags its tail, resulting in some wet pages. But I also got pretty adept at nudging it away over the three-day weekend.

Week of July 27, 2026

Paperback releases for the week of July 27th include THE WEDDING PEOPLE by Alison Espach, a propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew; EMPIRE OF THE ELITE, Michael M. Grynbaum's dishy history of the Condé Nast magazine empire --- home of Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and more --- focusing on its glitzy heyday from the 1980s through the 2000s; NORMAL WOMEN, a landmark work of feminist nonfiction from Philippa Gregory that radically redefines our understanding of the extraordinary roles ordinary women played throughout British history; and THIS HAPPENED TO ME, a transformative, exquisitely rendered memoir in which Kate Price describes how she broke free of that which had defined her childhood and went on to create a purpose-driven life and family, on her own terms.

Week of July 20, 2026

Paperback releases for the week of July 20th include MY FRIENDS by Fredrik Backman, an unforgettably funny and deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a complete stranger’s life 25 years later; THE FRIEND OF THE FAMILY, an emotional story about family, sacrifice and transcendent love from Dean Koontz, in which a girl liberated from a carnival sideshow discovers her mysterious purpose; Francesca Serritella's FULL BLOOM, a stunning novel about ambition and untapped desire that finds a woman's life forever changed by a mysterious perfume; and POSITIVE OBSESSION by Susana M. Morris, a magnificent cultural biography that charts the life of one of our greatest writers, Octavia E. Butler, situating her alongside the key historical and social moments that shaped her work.

August 2026 Bookaccino Signup

August 2026 Bookaccino Signup

July 8, 2026

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we think is a great summer reading selection. Read more about it, and enter our Summer Reading Contest by Thursday, July 9th at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of TEACH THE TORCHES TO BURN by Christina Dodd, which is now available. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

Week of July 13, 2026

Paperback releases for the week of July 13th include WE ARE ALL GUILTY HERE, the first thrilling mystery in Karin Slaughter's North Falls series, which our reviewer Ray Palen says “hits hard enough to take the breath out of you and leaves behind indelible images of depravity that are difficult to shake”; THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS by Ocean Vuong, a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive; Rebecca Armitage's THE HEIR APPARENT, an irresistible modern fairy tale about a British princess who must decide between her duty to her family --- or to her own heart; and THE MOTHER NEXT DOOR by Andrea Dunlop (the host and creator of the award-winning true crime podcast “Nobody Should Believe Me”) and Mike Weber,   a groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that investigates Munchausen by proxy.  

Week of July 6, 2026

Paperback releases for the week of July 6th include APOSTLE'S COVE, the 21st installment in William Kent Krueger's New York Times bestselling series featuring Cork O'Connor, who revisits a case from his past and confronts mysterious deaths in the present; THE WOMAN IN SUITE 11, the follow-up to Ruth Ware’s multi-million-copy mega-hit, THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10, in which Lo Blacklock returns to attend the opening of a luxury hotel, only to find herself in a white-knuckled race across Europe; WAYWARD GIRLS by Susan Wiggs, a wrenching but life-affirming novel based on a true story of survival, friendship and redemption, revolving around six girls who are condemned to forced labor in the laundry of a Catholic reform school during the turbulent Vietnam era; and JFK: Public, Private, Secret, J. Randy Taraborrelli's deeply researched and authoritative biography of John F. Kennedy.