Elinor Lipman, "On Turpentine Lane"

     If you want a breezy, comedic, social satire, written with consummate skill--this is for you. Elinor Lipman is a brilliant writer, and the milieu in which she sets her novel is accurately portrayed--or perhaps skewered. 
     Faith Frankel has left Manhattan to go to work in a minor administrative capacity at Everton Country Day School, not far from Boston. She buys an old house on Turpentine Lane that proves to have historical skeletons in its cupboards, or rather in its cellar. Her job seems to consist of not much more than writing thank you letters to donors to the school, and the first crisis of the story is an accusation that she may have embezzled some funds because a donor has made out a large check to her. She has recently started to disengage from a relationship with a doofus who has set off to walk across the country wearing a sign that says "Free Hugs." Her father has left her mother to become a painter, and his talent lies in faking Chagalls. That's one of several problems for Faith to sort out while she is also learning of the history of the house on Turpentine Lane. 
     I needn't go on...the novel is a very agreeable, complicated, and enjoyable tale that will keep you amused until the end--although the resolution of Faith's love life is predictable from early on.