Bestselling author Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity,” “Fever Pitch,” “About a Boy,” “Juliet, Naked”) is a virtuoso at love gone wrong. In his new short story, "Everyone’s Reading Bastard," Hornby paints a wincingly comic picture of just how messy modern relationships can become, as his characters hit delightful new lows of cruelty, misery, and pettiness.

Newspaper columnist Elaine Harris has always written about her life with husband Charlie. Her editor and her legions of readers count on full disclosure from her, but what no one—least of all Charlie—anticipates, only a week after the couple decide to end their marriage, is the speed and inventiveness with which she begins to try him in the court of public opinion. On Monday morning, it’s a smirk by a forgettable former lover that first clues him in that something’s wrong. Then, before he’s settled in at his desk, another co-worker salutes Charlie with the title of Elaine’s new column: “Bastard!” A quick check online leads him to the column, the subtitle leaving little doubt as to what he’s in for: “Life with an Ex. He’s Gone but Not Forgotten.” Charlie’s only hope is that Elaine will get bored and abandon the weekly column—a colorful litany of his failures as a partner, father, breadwinner, and lover—or that it won’t catch on. But soon enough it’s a multimedia feeding frenzy, and everyone’s reading Bastard!
And for Charlie, that’s a bitch.

Nick Hornby was born in Redhill, Surrey, England on April 17, 1957. He graduated from Cambridge University where he studied English. His books High Fidelity; Fever Pitch, which won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award in 1992; About a Boy and An Education were all made into movies. His other books include Slam; A Long Way Down; How to Be Good; Songbook; Shakespeare Wrote for Money; and The Polysyllabic Spree. He has received numerous awards including the American Academy of Arts and Letters' E. M. Forster Award in 1999 and the Orange Word International Writers' London Award in 2003. In addition to his books, his works have appeared in Esquire, Elle, GQ, Time, and Cosmopolitan.