"Geoff Nicholson's twelfth novel is an elegantly constructed and often funny story rendered with wry, surgical precision." (Matthew Klam, The New York Times Book Review)

"Deliciously cynical and witty. A clever and original novel of deception, failures, and hope."(Washington Times)

Female Ruins is the story of Christopher Howell, a cult architect who allegedly built just one building-reputedly a wild, willful amalgam of styles ranging from 11th-century Norman to 20th-century Neutra. When Howell's daughter-and keeper of his flame-Kelly, and a Howell groupie named Jack Dexter hook up in a free-falling love affair, the search for this apocryphal building becomes a search for a lost past. Brilliantly funny and seriously obsessive, Female Ruins shows how the castles we build are often symbols of our own needs, follies, and magnificent obsessions.