Today Will Be Different

The instant international bestseller. About a woman who wakes up determined to be her best self… but then life happens.

“I had the uncanny feeling, while reading Today Will Be Different, that Maria Semple had somehow snuck into my house when I was asleep, took an x-ray image of my heart, then painted it by hand in neon colors. This book is searingly honest and hilarious and dark and neurotic. It is dizzying. Best of all, it is delicious.”
– Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies

“[A] poetic, seriously funny and brainy dream of a novel — ‘Mrs. Dalloway Takes Laughing Gas,’ perhaps.”
– Cover of New York Times Book Review (full review here)

“Loopy, deeply, darkly funny and brave.”
― Washington Post (full review here)

“Few will be indifferent to this achingly funny and very dear book. This author is on her way to becoming a national treasure.”
– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Today Will Be Different is so unique, so smart, so funny, so beautifully humane, so utterly of our times, it’s astonishing. I’ve scribbled exclamation points and underlined passages on almost every single page so I can go back and savor. I’ve started quoting it as if it’s already a classic–which, no doubt, it will be.”
– Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl and Dark Places

“Hilarious [and] heartwarming.”
– Entertainment Weekly

“Brisk, amusing and engaging… Semple is a champion observer of the human condition.”
– Miami Herald

“Truly smart and deep and funny — worthy of laughing out loud.”
– Los Angeles Times (full review here)

“Today Will Be Different is going to delight the many, many fans of Where’d You Go, Bernadette.”
– Dallas Morning News (full review here)

“A sharp, funny read… Consistently entertaining.”
– Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Writing a comedy novel that manages to connect emotionally is no easy task, but Semple knocks it out of the park. Today Will Be Different is hilarious, moving and written perfectly, and it makes a good case for Semple as one of America’s best living comic novelists.”
– NPR.org (full review here)

“An unexpectedly heartfelt exploration of a woman’s inner life. (And yes, it’s still funny.)”
– Seattle Times (full review here)

“A zesty, memorable novel.”
– The Guardian

“Fans of Where’d You Go, Bernadette will eat up Semple’s entertaining new novel.”
– St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Deliciously mucky mayhem.”
– San Francisco Chronicle

“Vivid, hilarious… the comic (and graphic!) novel of the year.”
– Wired

Where’d You Go, Bernadette

The runaway international bestseller. Over a year on the New York Times bestseller list. Translated into over 30 languages. A major motion motion picture starring Cate Blanchett.

 “The tightly constructed Where’d You Go, Bernadette is written in many formats — e-mails, letters, F.B.I. documents, correspondence with a psychiatrist and even an emergency-room bill for a run-in between Bernadette and Audrey. Yet these pieces are strung together so wittily that Ms. Semple’s storytelling is always front and center, in sharp focus. You could stop and pay attention to how apt each new format is, how rarely she repeats herself and how imaginatively she unveils every bit of information. But you would have to stop laughing first.”  Full review
– The New York Times

“Semple’s characters are marvelous: They have untold secrets, personalities with multiple dimensions, moments of failure and grace. Maybe this is what Semple learned writing for the television show Mad About You. Before she left Hollywood — like Bernadette, Semple now lives in Seattle — she was a producer on Arrested Development, and there is quite a bit of that show’s unexpected, antic plotting in this novel. Its many twists and turns are genuinely surprising. Semple has written a fantastic, funny novel. Its affecting characters, not-necessarily-nice humor and surprising plot twists make this novel an enchanting ride.”  Full review
– Los Angeles Times

“[I was] stunned and transported by this extraordinarily powerful and intelligent novel.”
―Time Magazine

“Semple paints each character with depth and tenderness while keeping the tone upbeat; no easy feat for a novel about a mother who pulls a disappearing act.”
– USA Today

“Semple, who formerly wrote for legendary Fox sitcom Arrested Development, has the feel for family strife of a born literary novelist, but she retains the comedic sensibility of a screen writer; which is to say that the book is actually laugh-out-loud funny, rather than “humorous.” And don’t let the hilarity of the first third of the book fool you into thinking that this is a light farce; by the last page, Semple, in addition to skewering helicopter-parents with satire so deft that it could pass for truth, touches on religion, class, and what we owe to those we love.”
– Newsweek/The Daily Beast

“Where’d You Go, Bernadette is achingly funny and perfectly timed… Semple has a big heart, and possesses that rare ability to skewer, dissect and empathize with her targets, all at the same time. There’s a reason A-list novelists like Jonathan Franzen and Kate Atkinson endorsed this book. Read Bernadette, laugh loud and long, then take a good look in the mirror.”
– Seattle Times

“…A shrewd yet compassionate portrait of family dysfunction and the volatility of genius in laugh-out-loud, irresistibly high-spirited prose. Semple’s greatest success lies in exactly the sorts of delights we’d expect from a writer nominated for a Writers Guild Award for her work on Arrested Development: acid-tongued humor, deftly calculated timing, on-point dialogue, and a deeply self-assured knack for nailing the wacky and eccentric. Her characters, simultaneously larger-than-life and grounded in reality, embody her aptitude for belly-laugh satire and social commentary. As intelligent and enlightening as it is charming, Where’d You Go, Bernadette takes readers on an original and movingly imaginative adventure.”
– Elle Magazine

“Though much of the story is told through documents — e-mails, letters, magazine articles — precocious young teen Bee as narrator is great company, entertaining and convincing in her comportment. Semple pokes fun at the Pacific Northwest as only a Seattlite can and concocts a caper that, if seen from outer-space, might be a mess but in the minutiae of its tangles is clear and rewarding. Under the guise of a hilarious romp, Semple explores the universal questions of why we do what we do and love what we love to some sweet and unexpected ends.”
– Booklist (starred review)

“Semple’s delightfully sharp-clawed second novel [is] a comic caper called Where’d You Go, Bernadette, about a wonderfully eccentric, vitriolic, MacArthur-winning former architect and the plucky teenage daughter determined to find her when she goes missing. As Molière made clear, there’s humor aplenty in misanthropy, and Semple milks her character’s bile to great satirical effect. There’s a lot to like in Semple’s charming novel, including the vivacious humor and the lesson that when creative forces like Bernadette stop creating, they become “a menace to society.” Even more appealing is the mutually adoring mother-daughter relationship at its warm heart.” Full review
– NPR Books

“In addition to being a gleeful satire of the Emerald City (and people who call it “the Emerald City”), Where’d You Go, Bernadette is also an addictive black comedy about family dysfunction with characters as wild and misanthropic as they are real. The story is told through email exchanges, letters, memos, FBI files, police reports — which allows Semple to do what she does best: write razor-sharp dialogue. At its best, Where’d You Go, Bernadette not only pokes fun at the city but at the biases of transplants — and if there’s anything we all need a lesson in, it’s how to laugh at ourselves. Semple’s the best kind of teacher.”
– Seattle Met Magazine

“Semple is the novelist of the moment. Her second full-length book, the impossibly clever character study-cum-escape fantasy Where’d You Go Bernadette is a gas. Not for nothing, it features a blurb from Franzen himself on the front cover: “I tore through this book with heedless pleasure.” And who wouldn’t? Semple gleefully and skillfully skewers tony private-school PTAs, Seattle’s self-righteous eco-culture, helicopter parenting, software gurus and architecture fetishism — all ripe for skillful skewering — while maintaining a refreshing snarklessness that’s been woefully missing from so much contemporary comic writing today.”
– The Denver Post

“Where’d You Go, Bernadette may just be the most unique and hilarious book I’ve read all year. It’s a sendup of the culture of Microsoft and Seattle private schools. An epistolary novel that includes emails, faxes, police reports and even a TED talk. A surprisingly poignant story of a family’s love.”
– Bookpage

“And uproarious comedy of manners.”
– People Magazine

“Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a smart, caperish, very contemporary novel about marriage, mores and family life by an observer who knows the cultural landscape.”
– Kansas City Star

“Jonathan Franzen endorsed it, and we weren’t aware that he liked anything, so we felt inclined to pick it up. We now see why he enjoyed it so much, as it is shares similar themes with his own books (people feeling stifled/trapped by suburban life, the odd, annoying characters one encounters in the suburbs).”
– Huffington Post

“A modern-day comic caper full of heart and ingenuity… The nuances of mundane interactions are brilliantly captured, and the overarching mystery deepens with each page, until the thoroughly satisfying dénouement.”
– Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

“The characters in Where’d You Go, Bernadette may be in real emotional pain, but Semple has the wit and perspective and imagination to make their story hilarious. I tore through this book with heedless pleasure.”
– Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom and The Corrections

“Maria Semple dissects the gory complexities of familial dysfunction with a deft and tender hand. Where’d You Go, Bernadette is a triumph of social observation and black comedy by a skillful chronicler of moneyed malaise.”
– Patrick DeWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers

“Where’d You Go, Bernadette is fresh and funny and accomplished, but the best thing about it was that I never had any idea what was going to happen next. It was a wild ride…”
– Kate Atkinson, author of Case Histories and 
Started Early, Took My Dog

This One is Mine

Maria Semple’s debut novel. A compassionate and wickedly funny satire about our need for more -- and the often disastrous choices we make in the name of happiness.  

SPLENDID…KEENLY-OBSERVED
– Los Angeles Times

A DELIGHT
– The Boston Globe

WICKEDLY-FUNNY
– Book Reporter

WHIP-SMART…GIMLET-EYED
– Kansas City Star

HUMS WITH SUSPENSE
– Columbus Dispatch

DELIGHTFUL…EXQUISITE
– Publisher’s Weekly

DEVASTATING…POETIC
– Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Buy Maria’s books at an Independent Bookstore, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon