"And who among us would deny Jane Austen her happy endings or insist that Cary Grant and Irene Dunne should not get back together at the end of The Awful Truth? There are tragedies and there are comedies, aren't there? And they are often more the same than different, rather like men and women, if you ask me. A comedy depends on stopping the story at exactly the right moment." Mia Fredrickson, the wry, vituperative, tragicomic poet narrator of The Summer Without Men, has been forced to reexamine her own life. One day, out of the blue, after thirty years of marriage, Mia’s husband, a renowned neuroscientist, asks her for a “pause.” This abrupt request sends her reeling and lands her in a psychiatric ward. The June following Mia’s release from the hospital, she returns to the prairie town of her childhood, where her mother lives in an old people’s home. Alone in a rented house, she rages and fumes and bemoans her sorry fate. Slowly, however, she is drawn into the lives of those around her—her mother and her close friends,“the Five Swans,” and her young neighbor with two small children and a loud angry husband—and the adolescent girls in her poetry workshop whose scheming and petty cruelty carry a threat all their own. From the internationally bestselling author of What I Loved comes a provocative, witty, and revelatory novel about women and girls, love and marriage, and the age-old question of sameness and difference between the sexes.

From the “most talented writer of his generation” (The New York Times), a lightning flash of a novel that is at once a gripping emotional drama and a brilliant examination of the devices, digital and literary, we use to store―or to erase―our memories. The narrator of Ben Lerner’s new novel has traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend, Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail “from the future and the past simultaneously” and who “reenchants the air” when he speaks. But the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink. He arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to one another, that store or obliterate memory. Haunted by Kafka (there are echoes of “The Judgement” and “A Hunger Artist”), but utterly contemporary, Lerner combines trenchant insight with lyric mystery. Ultimately, Transcription demonstrates what only a work of fiction can record.

From the “most talented writer of his generation” (The New York Times), a lightning flash of a novel that is at once a gripping emotional drama and a brilliant examination of the devices, digital and literary, we use to store―or to erase―our memories. The narrator of Ben Lerner’s new novel has traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend, Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail “from the future and the past simultaneously” and who “reenchants the air” when he speaks. But the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink. He arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to one another, that store or obliterate memory. Haunted by Kafka (there are echoes of “The Judgement” and “A Hunger Artist”), but utterly contemporary, Lerner combines trenchant insight with lyric mystery. Ultimately, Transcription demonstrates what only a work of fiction can record.

When Emma hits her quarter-life crisis and moves back to the city where she went to college, she finds herself neighbors with the boy whose heart she broke five years earlier in this heartfelt and witty second-chance debut romcom. Emma thought her late twenties couldn’t get more complicated after she quit her teaching job and moved across the country to figure out what comes next. Her new life in Boston is filled with more than enough to worry a basement apartment full of disorganized boxes, a resistance to finding love, a medical condition that holds her back from putting herself out there, and on top of it all she hears a familiar voice from the apartment above …Harrison. Emma hasn’t seen Harrison since an explosive fight ended their college friendship and closed the door on anything more between them—and now she can hear the details of his active dating life one floor above her. Emma only has herself to blame; her inability to be vulnerable with Harrison drove him away, and now, he’s a guinea pig-owning pediatric nurse in a well-decorated apartment. Harrison has grown into someone else, but those old feelings are, somehow, stronger than Emma remembers. Despite the opportunity of a second chance with Harrison, Emma remains wary of romance until she figures out how to manage the painful and involuntary pelvic floor contractions caused by her condition, so she doesn’t have to fear physical intimacy. She hopes to avoid ever having to open up emotionally about the condition – but can she learn to let her loved ones in? Equal parts humor and heart, Thighs Wide Shut is a love letter to anyone who’s ever felt their body is a barrier to their happiness and a charming exploration of the beauty of allowing vulnerability to take the lead.

When Emma hits her quarter-life crisis and moves back to the city where she went to college, she finds herself neighbors with the boy whose heart she broke five years earlier in this heartfelt and witty second-chance debut romcom. Emma thought her late twenties couldn’t get more complicated after she quit her teaching job and moved across the country to figure out what comes next. Her new life in Boston is filled with more than enough to worry a basement apartment full of disorganized boxes, a resistance to finding love, a medical condition that holds her back from putting herself out there, and on top of it all she hears a familiar voice from the apartment above …Harrison. Emma hasn’t seen Harrison since an explosive fight ended their college friendship and closed the door on anything more between them—and now she can hear the details of his active dating life one floor above her. Emma only has herself to blame; her inability to be vulnerable with Harrison drove him away, and now, he’s a guinea pig-owning pediatric nurse in a well-decorated apartment. Harrison has grown into someone else, but those old feelings are, somehow, stronger than Emma remembers. Despite the opportunity of a second chance with Harrison, Emma remains wary of romance until she figures out how to manage the painful and involuntary pelvic floor contractions caused by her condition, so she doesn’t have to fear physical intimacy. She hopes to avoid ever having to open up emotionally about the condition – but can she learn to let her loved ones in? Equal parts humor and heart, Thighs Wide Shut is a love letter to anyone who’s ever felt their body is a barrier to their happiness and a charming exploration of the beauty of allowing vulnerability to take the lead.

'You knew I'd write a book about you someday' Our narrator understands good love stories - their secrets, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules. She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined - with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love. Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth. Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, Heart the Lover is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love. This is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.

'You knew I'd write a book about you someday' Our narrator understands good love stories - their secrets, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules. She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. Their lives became quickly intertwined - with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love. Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth. Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, Heart the Lover is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love. This is King at her very best, affirming her as a masterful chronicler of the human experience and one of the finest novelists at work today.

“I was two percent into Bad Words when I realized I was reading something special, the rare kind of book that not only treads new, fresh territory but does so in a way that feels startlingly inevitable. The kind of book I can’t believe doesn’t already exist, because it is just so right, so the thing I’ve been waiting for. It’s also a book that could only ever have been written by Rioghnach Robinson, whose clear, clever voice and incisive social commentary elevate the book’s punchy premise and irresistible will-they-won’t-they romance to a once-in-a-lifetime read about truth, art, vulnerability and all the sticky places they intersect. Bad Words left me buzzing.” — Emily Henry, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Great Big Beautiful Life Bad Words follows Parker Navarro, whose debut was snapped up in a million-dollar deal and pegged to be the book of the year—until notorious City Magazine critic Selina Chan tore it apart, turning it into the decade’s biggest flop. Now, four years later, Parker’s second novel is about to drop, and he’s desperate for redemption. But when Selina’s brutal new review goes viral, history repeats itself, and a fiery, very public blowout between them at a publishing party turns them into instant enemies of the literary world. As their feud plays out through snarky interviews and tense convention run-ins, their jabs about writing, criticism, and who gets to lead an artist’s life start to give way to the realization they might be more like-minded than they thought. While the feud carries on in public, a different conversation is taking place in private, especially after they're thrust together for one snowy New York evening and begin an epistolary communication that starts to feel a lot like flirting.

A bold and inventive novel about real romance in the virtual workplace—​bringing Castillo's trademark wit and sharp cultural criticism to an irresistible story about the possible future of love.Girlie Delmundo is the greatest content moderator in the world, and despite the setbacks of financial crises, climate catastrophe, and a global pandemic, she’s going she’s getting a promotion. Now thanks to her parent company Paragon’s purchase of Fairground—the world’s preeminent virtual reality content provider—she’s on the way to becoming an elite VR moderator, playing in the big leagues and, if her enthusiastic bosses are to be believed, moderating the next stage of human interaction. Despite the isolation that virtual reality requires from colleagues, friends, and family, the unbelievable perks of her new job mean she can solve a lot of her family's problems with money and mobility. She doesn't have to think about the childhood home they lost back in the Bay Area, or history at all—she can just pay any debts that come due. But when she meets William Cheung, Playground’s wry, reticent co-founder (now Chief Product Officer) and slowly unearths some of his secrets, and finds herself somehow falling in love, she’ll learn that history might be impossible to moderate and the future utterly impossible to control.