From the nationally bestselling author of the “powerful, heartbreaking” (Shelf Awareness) The Stationery Shop, a heartfelt, epic new novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran. In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.” But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives. Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences. Written with Marjan Kamali’s signature “evocative, devastating, and hauntingly beautiful” (Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of Light) prose, The Lion Women of Tehran is a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young, and the way love and courage transforms our lives.

All's fair in love and lore. Joonie is living in a fantasy—at least that's what people keep telling her. A copywriter by day and fanfic auteur by night, Joonie continues to date and dump disappointing men in search of a happily ever after. But every potential suitor seems to have one flaw in They can't hold a candle to her book boyfriend, Ryke. The protagonist of her favorite fantasy romance series (and, notably, a sexy merman), Ryke is a symbol for the life Joonie craves and the kind of relationship she deserves. So with a book always in her back pocket, why would she ever settle for less? But when Joonie learns that Ryke's character is based on someone the author knows in real life, she embarks on an epic quest to track him down, meet him in person, and determine once and for all if soulmates really do exist. Unfortunately, her brother's annoying best friend who doesn't believe in love or happy endings insists on hitching a ride. And like any great hero's journey, it doesn't take long for the trials and tribulations to begin.  As Joonie fights her way toward her love interest, using the skills she acquired through reading, she'll learn an important You can pursue a fantasy, but you can't always write your own plot. As unhinged as it is brilliant, Female Fantasy is both a self-aware dive into the concept of genre and a wild, steamy romp. Most of all, though, it's a heartfelt love letter to romance readers everywhere.

After a rough tumble and maybe-serious head injury, a disillusioned trans poet falls for a charming corporate lawyer in a love story that grapples with the explosive ghosts of relationships past, romantic and familial, from the Lambda Award-nominated author of Bellies, Nicola Dinan “Fell down the stairs and woke up a trad wife.” Max is thirty, a published poet and grossly overpaid legal counsel for a tech company. With a lifetime of dysphoria and fuccbois rattling around in her head, Max is plagued with a deep dissatisfaction during what should be the best years of her life. After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First things first: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity. Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent, a corporate lawyer and hobby baker, whose trad friendship group may as well speak a foreign language, and whose Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman. This uncharted territory may have rough terrain, but Vincent cares for Max in a way she’d long given up on as a foolish fantasy. Yet Vincent is carrying his own baggage from his gap year in Thailand a decade prior: an explosive entanglement with a mysterious, gorgeous traveler. Voice-driven, warm, and poignant, Disappoint Me is an exploration of millennial angst, race, trans panic, and the allure of bourgeois domesticity that asks if we are defined by our worst mistakes.