Today Will Be Different

The author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette gives us Eleanor Flood, who wakes up one day determined to be her best self, and then... life happens.

Eleanor Flood is going to re-examine her life, clean up her act, get dressed, only change into yoga clothes for yoga, which today she will actually attend, and be a better version of herself--all in one day.

But then, as it always does, life happens. Eleanor's husband, Joe, is missing, and their son, Timby, is wearing eye shadow to school and getting into fashion battles on the playground that pull Eleanor away from the afternoon of poetry lessons and art-making she had planned for herself. (It's true that it's Eleanor's fault: She did put makeup in Timby's Christmas stocking.) Just when it seems like things can't get any weirder or more in the way of Eleanor's personal transformation, a graphic memoir calledThe Flood Sisters surfaces, and the dramatic family story it tells reveals long-buried secrets and a younger sister to whom Eleanor never speaks.

With all the artistic madness, genius plotting, and bold social observation that madeBernadette such a hit, TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENT is a laugh-out-loud funny and heart filled, day-in-the-life romp filtered through Maria Semple's brilliant, microscopic eye.

Maria Semple's first novel, This One is Mine, was set in Los Angeles, where she also wrote for television shows includingArrested Development, Mad About You, and Ellen. She escaped from Los Angeles and lives with her family in Seattle, where her second novel, national bestsellerWhere'd You Go, Bernadette, took place.