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There was certainly always a category of fiction that explored the lives of primarily young, mostly single women—think of Mary McCarthy’s The Group or Rona Jaffe’s The Best of Everything, Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, or even Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice—but with the publication of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, novels about the experiences of single women (or “singletons” in Bridget-speak) took on a whole new life.

Candace Bushnell’s New York Observer columns were the basis for the hit television show Sex and the City, and her first novel, Four Blondes, could be read as more of the same, as it describes four New Yorkers in search of satisfying relationships and good sex (and not necessarily in that order).

The linked short stories of Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing spoof those ever-so-popular self-help tomes that pontificate on how to get and keep your man.

Lucinda Rosenfeld’s What She Saw In . . . is the story of Phoebe Fine’s relationship with fifteen different men, including the first boy she kissed (Stinky Mancuso), her married lover Bruce Bledstone, and artist Pablo Miles (born Peter Mandelbaum).

Although Kate Reddy is married with children and is a successful bond trader, as the heroine of Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It she can be seen as Bridget Jones’s older, no less harried and worried sister.

Christina Bartolomeo’s delightful Cupid and Diana is “a novel about finding the right man, the right career, and the right outfit.”

Other chick-lit novels are Isabel Wolff’s TheThe Trials of Tiffany Trott and Making Minty Malone; Lisa Jewell’s Thirty Nothing; Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic; Dog Handling by Clare Naylor; Girls’ Poker Night by Jill A. Davis; Anna Maxted’s Getting Over It; Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed; and Marian Keyes’s Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married (and her other novels).