#unreadbythebed

So, unread by the bed is actually half-read on the dresser. Still, you can't mess with a Twitter hashtag. It's bad luck.

Here are a few special bits from Melissa Bank's newest book, "The Wonder Spot." She's also the author of "The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing." Bank has a gift for profiling characters so closely that in a few years, you might look back and remember them as friends. This is Cynthia, the protagonist's older brother's girlfiend...

"She was tall with very long arms and a big, red-lipsticked mouth. She was a clothing designer and had one of those personalities that drapes itself all over you at first. She hugged me when we'd met for example, and talk-talk-talked through dinner, not that I minded. She had a pretty voice and in it you could hear the song of the South at the end of a sentence."

And here's Bank's description of the protagonist Sophie's first job in book publishing where she meets Adam in the windowless "Bat Cave" on the 14th floor "though it came right after 12."

"I shared the Cave with three girls and one Boy Wonder, Adam, whom I adored. He was the kind of man who might've fished Zelda Fitzgerald out of the fountain at the Plaza, draped his cashmere coat around her shoulders, never asked for it back, and never told anyone the story."

Exquisite!