Women Behaving Badly in 'One Flight Up'

Ah, reading the classics is always on my To Do List, but when it’s hazy, hot, and stinky humid, I need some r-e-l-i-e-f.  When Newman’s Own lemonade and a Snickers ice cream bar won’t do the trick, I know that a good, juicy novel will. If you’re looking for a good read to escape this nasty weather and folks just acting out lately, grab a copy of “One Flight Up” by Susan Fales-Hill (Atria, $25). Stat! “One Flight Up” has the secrets and sisterhood of “Lace” [which one of you-expletive here-is my mother?]; the sophistication of Judith Krant’s “I’ll Take Manhattan”; and the sizzle of anything by Jackie Collins. Add to this cocktail a bit of chocolate, vanilla, and butterscotch flavor, and you have one satisfying treat. Fales-Hill, a producer and writer for “The Cosby Show,” “A Different World” and “Linc’s,” takes us into the upper-crust and urbane worlds of India, Abby, Monique, and Esme, all graduates of New York City’s posh (and fictitious) Sibley School for Girls. On the outside they seem to have it all — great marriages, homes, the works — but chapter by chapter, each woman tries to fight off the temptation to stray from her spouse, with mixed results. Fales-Hill, a philanthropist and a fixture in the social pages of the New York Times, provides readers with a virtual walking tour of the good life before the Great Recession, including the best place for truffles and luxurious sheets with a thread count much higher than this week’s thermometer. What’s your favorite novel to get away from it all?