Fairfield Bookstore Hosts New York Times Bestselling Author John Searles for New Book, Single Girls

New York Times bestselling author and longtime Cosmo editor John Searles will be discussing his new book, Single Girls, at the Fairfield University Store (1499 Post Road) on Tuesday, July 7, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Single Girls begins at the dawn of Helen’s legendary tenure and journeys back to her youth, envisioning the devastations and people that shaped her into a controversial legend. With dazzling, high-energy prose, Searles captures not just a movement but a mood: one of ambition, reinvention, and the intoxicating thrill of being young when a new world was possible for a single girl if only she was fearless enough to reach out and grab it. John was a longtime Cosmo editor, hired by Helen just out of graduate school, making him the perfect person to capture the spirited and irresistible chaos of her reign. Part love letter to an old friend, part celebration of a bygone-but-still-relevant era, Single Girls is a deeper look at a beloved and infamous American pop cultural touchstone in its unforgettable heyday.

John Searles is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of several novels, including the critically acclaimed, Help for the Haunted and Strange but True, which was turned into a Top 5 Netflix film. John’s books are published in over twenty languages and have been voted “Best of the Year” or top picks by Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Salon and the American Library Association. John appears regularly on NBC’s Today Show to discuss his favorite book selections. For more than two decades John was a top editor at Cosmopolitan, first hired by Helen Gurley Brown. He also writes essays for the New York Times and Washington Post. His new novel, Single Girls, named one of the Most Anticipated Reads of 2026 and a Best Summer Read by Oprah Daily, comes out July 7th. Single Girls is about Helen Gurley Brown in the 1960s and the team of intrepid women she assembled to transform Cosmo into the most successful women’s magazine of all time. The book has received wide praise from fellow authors like Kevin Kwan  who calls the book "irresistibly fun" and "brilliant" and Wally Lamb who says the book is "a rollocking good time...readers will laugh out loud and shed a tear or two."