Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel, Paperback Book, By: Maria Semple

A misanthropic matriarch leaves her eccentric family in crisis when she mysteriously disappears in this whip smart and divinely funny novel that inspired the movie starring Cate Blanchett (New York Times). Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect; and to 15 year old Bee, she is her best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette vanishes. It all began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle and people in general has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic. To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, and secret correspondence creating a compulsively readable and surprisingly touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.