Katie Couric Media

Novelist and former Cosmo editor John Searles on Brown's misunderstood legacy — and her radical ideas that are still relevant today.

Harper’s Bazaar

Whether you love short stories, sci-fi, or classic beach reads or simply want to log off ... we’ve got a book rec for you

Oprah Daily

Drawing on more than two decades as an editor, John Searles reflects on Helen Gurley Brown's leadership and legacy—and shares how those things became the foundation for Single Girls.

Publishers Weekly

Help for the Haunted author Searles parlays his years as an editor at Cosmopolitan into a glorious novel of the glossy magazine’s heyday and the rise to fame of founder Helen Gurley Brown (1922–2012).

Los Angeles Times

If a man is ruining your summer fun, might I suggest you leave him? At least, that’s what Helen Gurley Brown would have advised in 1965, the It-girl who shaped Cosmopolitan. Decades later, women — including myself — have her to thank.

People Magazine

“I hope it introduces younger readers to who she was because she was such a dynamic, fascinating person,” says ‘Single Girls’ author John Searles

Kirkus Review

Searles’ affection for the period and his characters infuses the novel with the bright energy of a twirly vintage sundress.

Woman’s World

From a swoony beach romance to a shocking murder plot this list has it all!

Oprah Daily

The bestselling author of Orphan Train and The Foursome shares the books that most transported her as a reader and transformed her as a writer.

Library Journal

Searles’s novel sparkles. Readers who enjoyed Marie Bostwick’s The Book Club for Troublesome Women will pounce on these pages.

Oprah Daily

Whether you’re looking for a steamy romance, a chilling true crime memoir, or a literary masterpiece, your beach reading is covered.

People Magazine

John Searles — whose 2004 novel Strange But True was adapted into the eponymous hit film two years ago — is drawing from personal "heartache" for his latest book.

By Katrina Niidas Holm

An arsonist burned down the apartment my husband and I share in New York City. We were bouncing from people’s houses to hotel rooms. Then, after we got our apartment rebuilt, my father died, and the pandemic hit…

John Searles is an award-winning author of four thrillers. His second, Strange But True, was adapted into a feature film in 2019, starring Nick Robinson, Amy Ryan, and Brian Cox….

“Every marriage has its secrets.” This prophetic line opens HER LAST AFFAIR, John Searles’ unnerving new novel. Here, he takes us on a journey involving a small cast of characters, each of whom are lamenting a love lost and how their lives will converge in surprising and tragic ways…

By Ruby Cutolo

First impression of John Searles, bestselling author of the novels Boy Still Missing and Strange but True, and the forthcoming Help for the Haunted (Morrow, September)…

By Linda Hitchcock

John Searles has written an intensely compelling book of suspense in his current novel Her Last Affair (Mariner Books)….

Love and revenge commingle until it's almost impossible to tell one from the other in the fascinating, character-driven Her Last Affair. As in his previous three novels, John Searles's low-boil plot hinges on slowly but forcefully building suspense, while subtly dropping clues to the characters' psychological makeup…

By People Magazine

John Searles wrote the book Strange But True in 2004 — and now it's been made into a film starring Greg Kinnear and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood breakout Margaret Qualley…

By Patrick Anderson

John Searles’s fascinating “Help for the Haunted” is all about the Mason family: the parents and their teenage daughters, Sylvie and Rose…

By Corrie Pikul

Part thriller, part mystery, part coming-of-age fable, this story of a high-school quarterback's tragic death -- and a most unlikely pregnancy -- will hold you transfixed.

By Carol Memmott

Nancy Bolchalk surprised fellow members of the Roosevelt Book Club in Hubbard, Ohio, when she arranged for author John Searles to talk with them by phone at one of their meetings.

By Carol Memmott

The best writers of noir fiction slip the dark and unseemly details of life into their novels in the most unlikely places...

An interview with John Searles.

"How did you, the son of a truck driver, end up becoming an Editor-at-Large for Cosmo? How long have you been working there...?"

By Janet Maslin

"Strange but True" belongs to the That Terrible Night storytelling genre...

By David S. Hirschman

Writing novels by night, editing Cosmo's book excerpts by day, and navigating between the two.