A hilarious and painfully relatable debut novel about one woman’s messy search for joy and meaning in the wake of an unexpected breakup, from comedian, essayist, and award-winning screenwriter Monica Heisey Maggie is fine. She’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage only lasted 608 days, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée™. Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4 am, and “get back out there” sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of single life, intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor and asking herself tough questions along the way. Laugh-out-loud funny and filled with sharp observations, Really Good, Actually is a tender and bittersweet comedy that lays bare the uncertainties of modern love, friendship, and our search for that thing we like to call “happiness”. This is a remarkable debut from an unforgettable new voice in fiction.

Acclaimed author Jade Song (Chlorine) returns with her latest literary exploration: a lyrical, poignant, and heartfelt novel about the meaning of love, friendship, debt, depression, and death in New York City—a coming-of-age for a new generation, in the vein of Sally Rooney and Ottessa Moshfegh. For as far back as she can remember, Vicky has been fascinated and obsessed with death as the only inevitable thing in life. From living above a Chinatown funeral parlor to working at a celebrity start-up for bespoke urns, she has surrounded herself with death—in her home, in her work, and in her ever-growing collection of zhizha, paper creations meant to be burned for the dead, adorning the walls of her apartment. Yet, though living in Manhattan and working her dream job is all she ever wanted, she still struggles to have meaningful connections—or find any meaning at all—in her life. Too often she spends the day in bed, only drawn out from time to time by her best (and only) friend, Jen. That changes when a dating app leads her into a throuple with an artist and a labor organizer, who offer exactly the kind of love she needs. For some time, it’s perfect, but no one understands better than Vicky that all things must end. As doubts grow over the love in her life, her friendship with Jen, and her professional success, the oddly comforting abstraction of death starts becoming something else altogether. With everything beginning to feel hollow and temporary, Vicky must decide how to keep moving forward. To try and hold on to what she has, or to once again do what she does destroy.

"A terrific fresh, original, and surprising." -George SaundersFor fans of Homesick for Another World and HBO's Girls, a magnetic debut story collection following ten ambitious women and one male superstar as they pursue their desires-however deluded-for more.A listless woman befriends an influencer at a rooftop party, only to discover her lifestyle is not as glamorous as it seems. A college freshman gives the world's longest blow job to a boy whose name she's forgotten. A fan-favorite reality TV star joins a dating app after an explosive breakup, ready to move on, but finds she's only in control when cameras are rolling. While working in a hot tub showroom, a struggling actress goes method so she can nail an audition for the role of High School Junkie Girlfriend. Threaded throughout these explorations of neuroses and aspirations is one Arlo Banks, a hotshot actor, who faces his own downfall when he's accused of cannibalism. From the dazzling to the mundane, Rende's brilliant, unnerving, cynical stories hold a mirror to our obsession with how we're perceived and our ache to be adored. Above all else, I Could Be Famous is a love letter to big ambitions and bigger dissatisfactions, belief in ourselves, and the fascination we hold with the idea that we could-somehow, someday-be famous.

A scalding, darkly humorous debut following an enmeshed mother-daughter duo, both best friends and enemies, and the plastic surgery addiction that warps their lives into a perilous spiral At twenty-six, Linli Feng is still trying to escape her mother Fanny’s orbit. But after three years of estrangement, just when Linli has been accepted into a prestigious graduate program, she is dragged back by Fanny’s latest medical catastrophe and forced to return home. For decades, Fanny has been addicted to plastic surgery, getting bargain procedures in the basements of LA’s bootleg beauty industry. Now Fanny’s disfigured face is in dangerous revolt, infected and collapsing yet again from black-market injectables. But even as Linli wades through the wreck of family finances and juggles her mother’s medical care, Fanny has another secret in store. Fanny has won a spot on America’s Beauty Extreme, a reality television competition in which botched plastic surgery addicts compete for reconstructive surgery as riveted audiences tune in. When Linli attempts to rescue Fanny from the sinister subculture that has already claimed her mother’s face, she must at last confront the corrosive reality of American success that is at the fraught heart of their relationship.

In a forgotten patch of French countryside, a woman is battling her demons embracing exclusion yet wanting to belong, craving freedom whilst feeling trapped, yearning for family life but at the same time wanting to burn the entire house down. Given surprising leeway by her family for her increasingly erratic behaviour, she nevertheless feels ever more stifled and repressed. Motherhood, womanhood, the banality of love, the terrors of desire, the inexplicable brutality of another person carrying your heart forever Die, My Love faces all this with a raw intensity. It's not a question of if a breaking point will be reached, but rather when and how violent a form will it take?