Emma McLaughlin Books In Order

Publication Order of Nanny Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Emma McLaughlin is a young adult and literary fiction novelist who is best known for the “Nanny Diaries” series of novels. For more than a dozen years she has been writing her novels with her friend Nicola Kraus.
Emma burst onto the scene with the publishing of the 2002 work “The Nanny Diaries,” which was an expose on the lives of the nannies living and working in luxurious homes in the Upper East Side.

Since then, she has penned more than a dozen works of fiction that are for the most part about the life and times of a recent college graduate.

In “Between You and Me” her heroine struggles for independence, in “Dedication,” she embarks on a complicated love affair and in “Citizen Girl,” her heroine navigates new careers.
With more than 6 million copies of their novels sold in more than 32 languages, McLaughlin and Kraus her coauthor have been called a phenomenon by Newsweek.

She has since become a New York Times bestselling author and in 2007, her debut was made into a motion picture starring Alicia Keys, Laura Linney, and Scarlett Johansson.

McLaughlin has been featured numerous times on the likes of The View, CNN, Entertainment Tonight, MSNBC, Good Morning America, and The Today Show among many others.

Her writing has also been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, Town & Country, The Washington Post, Elle, USA Today, TIME, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

McLaughlin met Nicola Kraus her coauthor in Manhattan on an ATM on Lexington and 86th. While they had attended the same college for about a year and even taken one class together, they had never spoken to each other.

When they met in Manhattan, Emma invited Kraus to go to a performance at the theater with her that very night. Fortunately, Kraus agreed and they went to some strange spoken work, monologue performance thing where they had a lot of fun.
The two would then form a friendship and a few days following their night rendezvous, Emma moved in with Kraus, who introduced her to the man who would then become her husband.

Even though they were fast friends, it was not until about five years later that they began writing together. Emma was then working in organizational development while Kraus was an actor.

Kraus invited Emma to the reading of a play that she had been writing. The following day, Emma emailed her telling her that she wanted to pen something about their experiences working as nannies in Manhattan.
She needed a partner and thankfully Kraus agreed and that was how they began writing in the year 2000.

As for her inspiration, Emma McLaughlin says that her biggest motivators have to be Jenji Kohan, Edith Wharton, Kathryn Bigalow, Nora Ephron, and Doris Lessing.

She believes that these are the women who did their best to carve out a piece of the market that had previously only been dominated by men. They had done so by taking on some heavy things and coming up with unique voices.
She also gets a little inspiration from artists in entertainment who constantly show her that just about anyone can do it, even if they are women.

As for particular works, what she loves best is Edith Wharton’s deeply opinionated, biting, and sexy masterpiece “Age of Innocence.” McLaughlin also loves the calibrated journey to consciousness in “Heartburn” by Nora Ephron.

“The Nanny Diaries” by Emma McLaughlin opens with an ad for a young nanny. She is supposed to be selfless, enthusiastic, and cheerful bordering on masochistic.

She will also need to enjoy spending at least 16 hours with a preschooler who has deliberately been deprived of sleep. She also needs to take all manner of abuse from her employer.

Nan lives in a tiny studio apartment as she struggles to graduate from New York University. She decides to take the job of being a nanny to the only kid of one of the richest families in the city.

It is not long before she discovers how much juggling she has to do to ensure that the pampered Park Avenue wife who is her employer does not have to deal with cleaning, cooking, and taking care of her child.
At some point, the marriage of her employers begins crumbling and Nan finds herself so involved that she has crossed the bounds of good taste and human decency.

Her stay with the X family turns into an impossible battle to maintain her sense of humor, her integrity, and the health of their four-year-old kid.

It is a work that punctures the myth of the glamorous life of the upper class in Manhattan.

Emma McLaughlin’s novel “Nanny Returns” follows the life and times of Nanny who has been living abroad for more than a dozen years. She is now back in New York alongside Ryan her husband to make a life for themselves.
While trying to set up a new business and fixing up their new house, Ryan tells her that he is interested in starting a family.

It is the worst timing which is only made worse when Grayer X her former charge who is now a teen comes abc asking why she abandoned him several years back.

But she has no answers for him given that she herself has not come to terms with what happened. Against every instinct, she tries to help Grayer and Stilton his younger brother, as they deal with the brutal divorce of their parents.
She had put miles between herself and the world of the X family but she finds herself back in it for the sake of the children.

With keen observations of contemporary life and whip-smart dialogue, it is a fascinating look into life in Upper East Side New York.

“Citizen Girl” by Emma McLaughlin follows an idealistic, hard-working, and intelligent girl who graduated from college and has to struggle against the juggernaut that is the capitalist system.

She has done her best, garnered great grades, and believes she is ready to make a difference. Growing up, she had been taught she would be rewarded for working hard but now she has a nightmare boss, even if she is working her dream job.
Similar to the experiences of intelligent young women across the world, her older boss is threatened by the potential change the new employee could bring.

The lead finds herself gaslit, emotionally abused, and unable to do anything right and she ends up fired.

After weeks of feeling worthless and useless, she finds a new job but the new boss who is a man provides hardly any support, leadership, or guidance and calls her a whiny feminist when she asks him to do his job.
Will she be able to maintain her idealism in the cutthroat corporate world?