Grape Juice: An 831 Stories Romance

Eliza Dumais

For fans of Under the Tuscan Sun, French Kiss, and The Pairing.In her life in NYC, Alice feels like she’s withering on the vine. So when her boss suggests she attend wine harvest in rural France, she’s on a plane faster than she can second-guess herself. On her first day of alcohol-addled adult summer camp, she’s paired with Henri—equally disillusioned, albeit in his own very French way—and she realizes just how much can change if she’s willing to get her hands dirty.

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Chosen Family

Madeleine Gray

Books about friendship are not often described as love stories, but this is one. At the age of twelve, Nell has accepted that hers will likely be a friendless existence. She's not interested in boys or makeup or competing to see who can eat the least - so fitting in at her all-girls' school feels impossible. But then, a new girl arrives at school. Eve has short hair like a boy's, a wicked sense of humour and an unshakable confidence that she will find her place in the world. And the moment they meet, Nell begins to rethink the whole friendless existence thing. As they grow into themselves, Nell and Eve will love each other and hurt each other - through the chlorine-scented savagery of adolescence; long, drunken nights in share houses and gay bars; the highs and lows of parenthood. And always, despite unspoken feelings and sexual confusion, they will choose each other. Again, and again. As friends, as lovers, as family.

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Intermezzo

Sally Rooney

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney. Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined. For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

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Meantime

Frankie Boyle

Glasgow, 2015. When Valium addict Felix McAveety's best friend Marina is found murdered in the local park, he goes looking for answers to questions that he quickly forgets. In a haze of uppers, hallucinogens, and diazepam, Felix enlists the help of a brilliant but mercurial GP; a bright young trade unionist; a failing screenwriter; semi-celebrity crime novelist Jane Pickford; and his crisis fuelled downstairs neighbour Donnie. Their investigation sends them on a bewildering expedition that takes in Scottish radical politics, Artificial Intelligence, cults, secret agents, smugglers and vegan record shops.

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Blob: A Love Story

Maggie Su

'A modern-day Mrs. Caliban, BLOB is a book that looks at identity and desire in profoundly interesting ways'Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See HereA hilarious and moving debut novel about a young woman who decides to turn a sentient blob into her perfect boyfriend... The daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, Vi Liu has never quite fit into her Midwestern college town. Now at twenty-three, after getting dumped and dropping out of college, Vi works as a front desk attendant at a hotel where she refills cucumber water samovars and fends off overtures of friendship from her bubbly blond coworker, Rachel. But when Vi decides to accompany Rachel to a local drag show, her life changes forever. In the alley outside the bar, next to a trash can, is a blob with beady black eyes. Unable to leave it behind, Vi picks up the creature and, in a moment of drunken desperation, takes it home with her. As her pet blob becomes sentient, Vi realizes it obeys her commands and she decides to mold the blob into her ideal partner. She feeds it sugary cereal and a stream of pop culture, and soon the creature transforms into a movie-star handsome white man. But as Vi's desire to be loved unconditionally threatens to spiral out of control, she is forced to confront her lonely childhood, the ex-boyfriend who has unfriended her, and the racial marginalization that has defined her relationships. Ultimately, Vi embarks on a journey of self-discovery and learns that it's impossible to control those you love. Blending the familiar with the fantastical, BLOB tells a witty, heartfelt story of what it means to be human.'An inventive, utterly unique debut'Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light

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