Ella Kennedy is in a rut. Nearly thirty, she's at risk of becoming both a perpetual graduate student and a continual failure at relationships. After spending three years at Columbia University ripping up outlines for her thesis topic of Marxist scholarship, she takes a job in Washington, D.C., at the fledgling Institute of Thought. Her assignment: establish a Web site and mail-order catalogue to market Karl Marx paraphernalia. Her dilemma: she is both computer illiterate and distracted by a thesis topic that she finds engaging. Against her advisor's wishes, she sets out to document the tragic life of Karl Marx's daughter Eleanor -- a brilliant woman who fell apart during the course of a bad relationship.

Meanwhile, Ella meets Nigel Lark, an adorably disheveled ornithologist with a delicious British accent; it is love at first sight. But as their relationship develops, Ella realizes that her own life is starting to mirror Eleanor's. For one thing, Nigel wears a wedding band and he doesn't want to talk about it. Deftly weaving fact and fiction, past and present, socialist theory and side-splitting humor, Susan Coll presents a warm and witty novel in the tradition of Cathleen Schine, Laura Zigman, and the Ephron sisters. karlmarx.com is a love story full of wonderful absurdities.