The Spinster Sisters

Table of Contents

 

 

PRAISE FOR Room for Improvement

“I adored everything about it—best of all, the humor is pervasive throughout the book. For those who say chick lit is played out, all I can say is, think again. Stacey Ballis proves the genre can be funny, honest, clever, real, and most importantly, totally fresh.”

—Jennifer Lancaster, author of
Bitter is the New Black

 
“More fun than a
Trading Spaces
marathon. One of the season’s best.”
—The Washington Post Book World

 
“Rife with humor—always earthy, often bawdy, unwaveringly forthright humor.”
—Chicago Sun-Times

 
“Self-proclaimed home-improvement junkie and author Ballis has written a laugh-out-loud novel that will appeal to HGTV devotees as well as those who like their chick lit on the sexy side. One of the summer’s hot reads for the beach.”
—Library Journal

 
“In her third outing, Ballis offers up a frothy, fun send-up of reality TV. Readers will have a blast watching Lily and her friends try to figure out what their priorities are in this lighthearted tale.”

Sleeping Over

“Ballis presents a refreshingly realistic approach to relationships and the things that test (and often break) them. Ballis’s sophomore effort will please readers who want something more than fairy-tale romance.”
—Booklist

 
“
Sleeping Over
will have you laughing, crying, and planning your next girl’s night out. This is the first novel I have read by Stacey Ballis, but I guarantee it won’t be the last!”

 
“This engaging story delivers everything you ask from a great read: it makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you
feel
.
Sleeping Over
gets my highest recommendation.”

 
 
Inappropriate Men

“An insightful and hilarious journey into the life and mind of Chicagoan Sidney Stein.”
—Today’s Chicago Woman

 
“Ballis’s debut is a witty tale of a thirtysomething who unexpectedly has to start the search for love all over again.”
—Booklist

 
“Stacey Ballis’s debut novel is a funny, smart book about love, heartbreak, and all the experiences in between.”

—Chatelaine
(also named
Inappropriate Men
one of their Seven Sizzling Summer Reads for 2004)

 
“Without a doubt,
Inappropriate Men
is one of the best books of 2004. Stacey Ballis has a way with words. Effortlessly, she makes them exciting and pulls the reader into the life of one of the most engaging characters ever created, Sidney Stein.”

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
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South Africa

 
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 
Copyright © 2007 by Stacey Ballis.

 
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without
permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation
of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 
PRINTING HISTORY Berkley trade paperback edition / March 2007

 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 
Ballis, Stacey.
The spinster sisters / Stacey Ballis.—Berkley trade paperback ed.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-0-425-21356-8

3. Dating services—Fiction. I. Title.

 
PS3602.A624S65 2007
813’.6—dc22 2006031997

 

 

 
You have always embodied the best in what it means to be a family, including the addition of friends who feel like family. You gave me the best gift anyone ever has, you made me a sister. Everything there is, there is because of you. Everything I do, I do because you empower me. The heart and soul of all my words begins with you both. LAS

For Deborah, Who has always been my best friend, my strongest supporter, my most challenging opponent, and my conscience. Whatever else I do, my favorite job is being your older, shorter, sister.

 
For Peggy, Sister by Choice since 1973. Thanks for over thirty years of love and encouragement, for scratching all those damn mosquito bites and teaching me double solitaire and a couple of adventures at Northern we probably shouldn’t talk about. This particular adventure began with your title, and I hope I did you proud.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Is anyone still reading these? Really? I thought not. I could thank just about anyone here, including Archduke Ferdinand, and I doubt it would cause a ripple.

 
But, for those of you who I do know actually stop here . . . a couple of heartfelt thanks.

 
To my amazing family, Mom and Dad, Deborah and Jonnie, you all know how much I love you. Ditto friends.

 
Scott Mendel, the world’s best agent and dear friend and partner . . . what a delight to have you with me on this journey.

 
Christine Zika, über-patient editor, for making the ladies real as well as lovely.

 
Jennifer Novak, for working miracles.

 
And for all my “sisters,” and you know who you are, thank you for everything!

by Bethany Jacobs

 
 
 
Jodi and Jill Spingold know a lot about being single. In fact, these siblings have made a career out of it. Jodi (thirty-four, with a degree in journalism), and Jill (thirty-two, with a degree in marketing and business), are riding the very lucrative self-help wave, and their mission is to empower single women everywhere. Their four-year-old corporation, Spinster Inc., is in fact made up of several different smaller business ventures. Their noon-to-two satellite radio show,
Lunch with the Spinster Sisters
, keeps women all over the country glued to their XM radios every Thursday. Their lines of T-shirts, office accessories, and gift items are sold nationwide. The Spinster Sisters Seal of Approval stickers on everything from pajamas to wine in a box have become a coveted marketing tool, and companies vie for their products to be one of the select few. (They choose just one item per month, and the products are always items that the sisters themselves use and enjoy.) And last, but certainly not least, their books are bestsellers in eight languages.

In the new conservatism era, when the average age of newly-weds is on the decrease and three children have supplanted two as the ever-increasing norm in the middle class, the self-proclaimed Spinster Sisters are touting empowered singlehood, and women all over the world are listening. I’ve been invited to meet with the moguls in their offices in Chicago. Their director of PR sends me an extensive press kit before my visit, which includes everything from copies of their coverage in
Chicago
magazine’s Most Eligible issue, to a joint bio, which reads almost like a Grimm’s fairy tale.

Nothing in my independent research deviates at all from what is iterated for me in the press materials. And the story is a compelling one. In a spectacular understatement, it hasn’t always been easy for the Spingold girls. At the tender ages of six and four, they lost both of their parents in a tragic car crash. Their mother had no family to speak of, but their father had two older sisters, neither married, who lived together in a ramshackle house in Palmer Square, a quiet residential neighborhood on the near northwest side of Chicago. These women, in their early forties at the time, took in their nieces and raised them well, if unconventionally. Ruth and Shirley Spingold, referred to as the “Original Spinster Sisters” by Jodi and Jill, are a throwback to another age. Never married, the two lived with their elderly parents until their deaths six months apart, and then assumed joint care of the house they had grown up in. Neither had ever moved out of her childhood bedroom. After the tragedy, the master bedroom was converted into a little girls’ paradise, with canopy beds, pink carpeting, and clouds painted on a blue ceiling. Jodi and Jill would remain together in this room, altering the decor as they aged, until Jodi left for college. Their parents had left a small amount of life insurance and savings, and their deceased maternal grandparents had established education trusts for them both, but the girls were mostly supported by income generated by Ruth and Shirley.