From the publisher: "The bestselling author of American Housewife and Southern Lady Code returns with a viciously funny, deeply felt collection of essays on friendship among grown-ass women. When Helen Ellis and her lifelong friends arrive for a reunion on the Redneck Riviera, they unpack more than their suitcases: stories of husbands and kids; lost parents and lost jobs; powdered onion dip and photographs you have to hold by the edges; dirty jokes and sunscreen with SPF higher than they hair-sprayed their bangs senior year; and a bad mammogram. It's a diagnosis that scares them, but could never break their bond. Because women pushing fifty won't be pushed around. A book that reads like the best cocktail party of your life, Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light is chockablock with fabulous characters: cat-lady plastic surgeons and waterpark Adonises; bridge ladies and poker players; platinum medallion fliers and Garage Sale Swindlers; forty-year-old divorcées; fifty-year-old new moms and still-young octogenarians."

The older I get the more I appreciate American Housewife author Ellis, whose frank, sharp stories have long made me guffaw and gasp (Did she really say that?). This collection covers a lot of ground—her husband’s snoring, Viagra-fueled sex, decorating, plants, poker—but is ultimately about her longtime marriage to her husband Lex and their life together on the Upper East Side, quite a change from the Alabama of her birth. Once again, Ellis proves eminently quotable (try this: “I want to live like a 1980s TV villainess.”) A varied, delightful, and spicy compendium. For fans of Elizabeth Passarella’s Good Apple and Jenny Lawson’s Broken (in the Best Possible Way).