Men - A Users Guide
By
Kathy Lette

From Toilet Training to Bedtime Battles

God, apparently as a prank, devised two sexes and called them "opposite." The sex war has raged for 5,000 years. But surely it’s time we called a truce... starting with men negotiating their terms of surrender.

Why do men like intelligent women? Because opposites attract. Just look at the evidence. What excites most men? Food, footy, a beer and the Playboy channel. The trouble is, women get all excited about nothing... and then we marry him.

Men are just like those gadgets you buy which read “A little assembly required” - then sit in the corner all in pieces for centuries. If only blokes had some operating instructions.

With regard to the male of the species, I often feel like a zoologist who’s dropped in on a bunch of gorillas and forgotten my tranquilizer gun.  If only men were given descriptive names, as in ye olden times, like, Attila the Hun and Ivan the Terrible.  Cheating Ratbag Misogynist the Third would so take the guess-work out of dating.

We women need a user’s guide. Having dedicated myself to years of in-depth research into the subject of men (I’m named after a diary and I’ve had many entries), and with a PhD in the glaringly obvious, in this owner’s manual, I offer you my top tips on how to understand, house-train, tame and, in extreme cases, bump off your bloke.

p.s. I do all my research in the most scientific fashion – over cappuccinos with girlfriends. (Well, a writer can’t have all work and no plagiarism!) But if I’ve given away any secrets please address your complains to my nom de plume – Miss Quote.

TO LOVE HONOUR AND BETRAY (TILL DIVORCE US DO PART)
by Kathy Lette

How can a husband have a midlife crisis when he's never left puberty?

It'll be an amicable split. You'll get 50 per cent of the acrimony.

Marriage is a fun-packed, frivolous activity – only occasionally resulting in death.

Lucy’s been married for so long, her wedding certificate should be in hieroglyphics. When Jasper walks out after eighteen years, she panics. What will she do about vehicle maintenance, shifting heavy objects and Allen keys? Not to mention her rebellious teenage daughter Tally, who blames Lucy for the marital meltdown. Low self-esteem is hereditary: you get it from your kids. While Tally’s busy trying to find a loophole in her birth certificate so she can put herself up for adoption, Lucy strives to accept that a child is for life and not just for Christmas. Could teenagers be God’s punishment for having sex in the first place?

This is a book about what to do when you fall in love. (Wipe it off your shoes before you walk it all over the carpet.) But above all it's a survival guide for anyone who has realized that the perfect marriage is like an orgasm – many of them are faked.

'HOW TO KILL YOUR HUSBAND (AND OTHER HANDY HOUSEHOLD HINTS)
by Kathy Lette

'HOW TO KILL YOUR HUSBAND (AND OTHER HANDY HOUSEHOLD HINTS) is the fast talking, heart-stoppingly paced and pun-tastic culmination of all that . . . Lette's writing is as taut as Angelina Jolies' inner thigh and really funny . . . in her customary breezy fashion, Lette crystallises all the pitfalls facing the modern working couple: work tensions and, more darkly, what becoems of two people who have lost all respect for each other. But what makes Lette such a pro is that, as well as insight, she provides her reader with that rarest of things: a good plot. Fundamentally, this is a well constructed, tightly written thriller . . . it's sold to the core. Like a good marriage, really' Sarah Vine THE TIMES

All women want to kill their husbands some of the time "Where there's a will, I intend to be in it," wives half-joke to each other. Marriage, it would appear, is a fun-packed frivolous hobby, only occasionally resulting in death.
But when Jazz Jardine is arrested for her husband's murder, the joke falls flat. Life should begin at 40 - not with life imprisonment for killing your spouse.
Jazz, stay-at-home mum and domestic goddess; Hannah, childless career woman; and Cassie, demented working mother of two are three ordinary women. Their record collections are classical, not criminal. Cassie and Hannah set out immediately to prove their best friend's innocence, uncovering betrayal, adultery, plot twists, thinner thighs and toy boys aplenty en route but will their friendship survive these ever darker revelations?
Sexy, funny and wise, Kathy Lette's irresistible new novel is about women not Having It All But Doing It All. It's about how today's mother is often a married lone parent. It's about the fact that no woman has ever shot her husband while he was vacuuming. This is Kathy Lette at her brilliant best, casting her trade mark caustic eye on what goes on in the bedrooms and kitchens of ordinary married couples. A novel which will strike a cord with married women everywhere and ensure that, from now on, they all read the small print on their marriage licenses.

Why do men like intelligent women? Because opposites attract.

This is what Shelaine Green thinks when she meets Kit Kinkade. Raised by a single mum, Shelly is convinced that if vibrators could 'kill spiders in the bathtub, light the barbie, kiss our upper eyelids and tell us we don't look fat in stretch lycra', then women wouldn't need men at all.

Okay, Kit's broken nose may give him the look of a streetwise Greek God - the way Hercules would look if he played in a heavy metal rock band - but he also believes a woman is little more than a life support system to an ovary.

They meet the day they are married.

A reality T.V. show runs a 'Desperate and Dateless' competition. A computer has matched Kit and Shelly, predicting them to be the perfect pair... with huge financial rewards if they can survive their honeymoon on a paradise island.

So, can Shelly and Kit fall in love at second sight? Or is a truce in the sex war as likely as seeing Bin Laden on a pub crawl? And why is Kit so mysterious? The Sphinx is less of a riddle than this man. What exactly is he hiding? Does it have anything to do with the gun she's just found in her knicker drawer? Not only does Shelly not have a licence to kill, she doesn't even have a learner's permit.

Love may be blind, but marriage is a real eye opener...

Show me a woman who's happy about turning 40 and I'll show you the electro-convulsive therapy scorch marks. Lizzie's surgeon husband, Hugo, falls for sabre-toothed trouser-hound Britney Amore, an actress who keeps fit by doing step-aerobics off her own ego. She is also silicone from tits to toenails. Must Lizzie go under the knife herself to win back  the man she loves?

Kathy Lette's first novel, written with her surfie chick friend Gabrielle Carey, when they were eighteen.  Puberty Blues  is about 'top chicks' and 'surfie spunks' and the kids who don't quite make the cut: it recreates with fascinating honesty a world where only the gang and the surf count. Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey's insightful novel is as painfully true today as it ever was.

Beccie Steele runs out on her fairytale wedding to Julian. Why can't she commit to her knight in shining Armani? It's not until Julian gets engaged to her best friend that Beccie realizes that the United Nations is about to declare her love life a disaster area.

Aussie Maddie Wolfe has fallen for a Pom who gives her the best cunnilingus this side of a detachable shower nozzle. By the time she finds out that he's also the kind of bloke who goes through the Tunnel of Love holding his own hand she's taken a pregnancy test...and failed. Will Alex chicken out of his obligation to his egg?

A satire on sex, surf and Sydney men - who all think that monogamy is something you make a dining room table out of. Hilarious, poignant and bawdy - the way women talk when there are no men around.

Every woman wants to be wanted but just not by the entire Metropolitan police force. Maddie Wolfe's first day out with her new born takes a Kafkaesque turn when she's wrongfully arrested in Harrods for shoplifting.The only person she can turn to is her hot-to-trot ex-lover Alex. Will he prove himself to be as useful as a solar powered vibrator on a rainy day...?

Kat's in Hollywood to meet a man who doesn't have love bites on his mirror. Nothing special, as long as he has a nice bum, a PhD and wants a loving relationship with bone-marrow-melting sex. Now, is that too much to ask of a billionaire? For Kat, love is in the air...or is it only her car exhaust...