Collection: Adult

*This gorgeous edition comes with French flaps, deckled edges, and spot gloss*

From the author of the Magnolia Parks universe and the Never series comes a fresh family drama with a heavy dose of romance and a twist of mystery.

"I can't remember the last time I couldn't get a handle on myself and my emotions, but the lid is slipping.

Something about the slipping lid feels like it's Sam Penny's fault. Like he broke the seal and he's slowly opening me up."

London-based Georgia Carter, professional lie detector and body-language savant, has long been estranged from her infuriating, close-minded, wealthy South Carolina family. After a falling-out years ago, the chasm runs deep between the black sheep--Georgia and her gay, alcoholic brother--and their parents and elder siblings. But when their father dies suddenly, Georgia returns to the States for the funeral...where she comes face-to-face with Sam Penny, her brother's AA sponsor.

Amid the tensions, dramas and revelations of the family reunion, Georgia and Sam are instantly drawn to each other. However, Georgia's brother also harbors feelings for Sam, and the last thing Georgia wants to do is hurt the only family she's ever really had.

When their father's will reveals a surprising bequest to a mysterious stranger, Georgia's ability to read people becomes crucial in unraveling her father's hidden past. The delicate balance within the family teeters, and secrets--both old and new--threaten to push them beyond the breaking point.

There are only so many cracks a damaged family can take before it shatters.

A sweet and sexy hockey romance about two ex-teammates and former best friends with benefits who are about to discover whether you can ever really have a second chance. From the USA TODAY bestselling author of the Game Changers series and Time to Shine.

After moving back to his hometown ten years ago, Riley Tuck thought he had left his major league hockey career--and his broken heart--far behind. But when an unexpected tragedy strikes, it brings ex-teammate and former best friend with benefits Adam Sheppard back into his life.

Coming to the small town of Avery River, Nova Scotia, might have been a mistake. Adam's not sure he'll ever win back Riley's trust after the way they left things--and the attention he's getting as a huge hockey star isn't exactly helping. Yet the chemistry that crackles between them is undeniable, even now.

As Adam helps Riley navigate his grief, long-buried feelings start to resurface. But they'll have to square off with their complicated past if they're going to have a real shot at a new beginning.

"This inventive, boundary-pushing follow-up to Detransition, Baby . . . [takes] on gender, transness and lives on the margins in all of their gorgeously complicated glory."--People

"Hot, heartbreaking, and thrillingly victorious."--Miranda July, New York Times bestselling author of All Fours

In this collection of one novel and three stories, bestselling author Torrey Peters's keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing.

In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.

Three startling stories surround Stag Dance "Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones" imagines a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend. In "The Chaser," a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last story, "The Masker," a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between two guides: a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.

Acidly funny and breathtaking in its scope, with the inventive audacity of George Saunders or Jennifer Egan, Stag Dance provokes, unsettles, and delights.

(analog) Cruising is a step-by-step guide to sex outside of our phones. Leo Herrera tackles Queer cruising etiquette with a blend of history, humor and poetry alongside his own personal cruising fairy tales and failures. From what to expect checking into a bathhouse, to the rules of consent in a darkroom, Leo shares tips helpful for first-timers and rusty old-timers. (Analog) Cruising builds its own language, defining implied consent, caressing cues and the museum technique.

Erika Edens is panicking. Behind on her bills and stuck in a crappy job, she's blindsided when ex-love-of-her-life Abby shows up needing a place to stay. This is the perfect situation for a second chance...

...except that Abby is a computer simulation in the body of an android. Battling the rising hostility of her world and the demons in her head, Erika struggles to come to terms with living in a country increasingly hostile to non-human entities. Can Erika adapt to life with her new roommate? Or will her troubles end any chance at reconciliation before it gets started?

Trigger warnings: Alcoholism, anxiety, bigotry, car accident, death, hate crimes, homophobia, intrusive thoughts, mental illness, racism, sexism, strong language, trauma/PTSD, violence

From the acclaimed author of Chef's Kiss, a groundbreaking trans Regency romance that's both delightfully witty and refreshingly iconoclastic.

The notoriously eccentric Lord Christopher Eden is a "man of unusual make" and even more unusual habits: he prefers to live far from the prying eyes and ears of the ton, and would rather have the comfortable company of his childhood cook and his aged butler than the swarm of servants and hangers-on befitting a man of his station. But Christopher's pleasant, if occasionally lonely life is upended when he receives word from his lawyers that, according to his late father's will, he must find a wife by the end of the Season if he intends to keep his family's fortune and the Eden estate. Christopher cannot imagine a worse fate: as he isn't attracted to women, his chances of making a wife happy are slim. Furthermore, if his quest to marry has any hope of succeeding, he must move to London posthaste and acquire some more suitable staff.

Enter James Harding, Christopher's new, distractingly handsome--if rigidly traditional--valet. After a rocky start, the two strike up a fragile friendship amid the throes of the London Season . . . a friendship that threatens to shatter under the looming shadow of Christopher's impending nuptials--and the secrets both men are keeping. With its heady combination of dry wit, slow-burn romance, and a nuanced portrait of trans identity, A Gentleman's Gentleman stands to transform the historical romance genre as we know it.

Private Detective Evander "Andy" Mills has been drawn back to the Lavender House estate for a missing person case. Pat, the family butler, has been volunteering for a book service, one that specializes in mailing queer books to a carefully guarded list of subscribers. With bookseller Howard Salzberger gone suspiciously missing along with his address book, everyone on that list, including some of Andy's closest friends, is now in danger.

A search of Howard's bookstore reveals that someone wanted to stop him and his co-owner, Dorothea Lamb, from sending out their next book. The evidence points not just to the Feds, but to the Mafia, who would be happy to use the subscriber list for blackmail.

Andy has to maneuver through both the government and the criminal world, all while dealing with a nosy reporter who remembers him from his days as a police detective and wants to know why he's no longer a cop. With his own secrets closing in on him, can Andy find the list before all the lives on it are at risk?

Set in atmospheric 1950s San Francisco, Rough Pages asks who is allowed to tell their own stories, and how far would you go to seek out the truth.

From a #1 Apple podcast host, Lambda Literary fellow, and dominatrix comes a sex-positive, judgment-free cultural deep-dive into the world of kink.

When celebrated BDSM educator Tina Horn first launched Why Are People Into That?!, publications from Vice to Buzzfeed heralded it as one of the best sex podcasts around. Each episode centered around a different fetish or fantasy, thoughtfully examining why, exactly, different strokes work for different folks. From sex workers and scientists to artists and activists, Tina's wide range of guests helped educate fascinated listeners across the world on the wide spectrum of humanity's appetites. With her listeners growing more and more insatiable, she soon realized that the only way to address the titular question with all the depth and nuance it deserved was to turn that idea into a book.

From spanking, strap-ons, and sluts, to taboos involving cake, chains, and cannibalism, WHY ARE PEOPLE INTO THAT? explores the universal drives that shape even the most specific erotic tastes, and the cultural context that molds and is molded by the way we conceptualize pleasure, gender, fantasy, and power. With buoyant prose, Tina invites us to reconsider everything we thought we knew about sexuality. How, for example, should we think about "consensual nonconsent" in a post-#MeToo era? How does cross-dressing fit in with our evolving cultural understanding of gender performance and identity? And what do foot fetishists, fisters, and FinDoms have in common?

Blending insightful cultural criticism, investigative journalism, and spicy anecdotes from Tina's 15+ years of hard-earned expertise in the sex industry and beyond, WHY ARE PEOPLE INTO THAT? is a philosophical-but-fun exploration of the prismatic spectrum of human desire and the expansive possibilities of pleasure. For fans of adrienne maree brown and Emily Nagoski, this raunchy and rousing book is perfect for anyone who is interested not only in the intricacies of what we desire, but in how desire itself really works.

Close your eyes. Picture open plains, wheat stalks swaying gently in the wind. Picture the quaint Main Street of a one-stoplight town. Picture endless summers on sunny, tranquil lakes. With four provocative novellas, Kill Creek author and Kansas native Scott Thomas takes a hatchet to the idyllic tropes of the American heartland.

In The Door in the Field, Thomas follows a quarrelsome construction worker named Rayland Allen whose bad day becomes a far worse night when drinks at an off-the-books establishment deep in the woods set Ray down an unforeseeably bloody path.

In The Boy in the Woods, Thomas follows young Eddie Reicher, who lingers a day too long at summer camp as unholy terror creeps in. Something evil has infected the counselors. And Eddie will have to do everything he can--even kill--if he hopes to survive the night.

In One Half of a Child's Face, Thomas follows the recently divorced Sienna Franklin. Spying on her daughter and ex-husband, she notices an odd painting hanging on the wall of an adjacent apartment. Over the course of the next few days, Sienna will watch with growing horror as the children in the apartment building begin to gather before the painting as if called to it.

And in Wear Your Secret Like a Stone, Thomas follows Tara Bright, whose low-stakes job at the Blatonville BuyBig superstore takes a turn when a mysterious customer complains about her book pick for the Halloween display. It soon becomes clear that the pagan totem within the pages of the book bears a remarkable resemblance to a forgotten artifact from Blatonville's history, and speaks to the darkness of Tara's own past.

With this collection, Thomas digs his hands into the soil of the American heartland and establishes himself as the master of Midwestern Gothic.

Originally published in 1998, this shockingly prescient novel's timely message of hope and resistance in the face of fanaticism is more relevant than ever.

In 2032, Lauren Olamina has survived the destruction of her home and family, and realized her vision of a peaceful community in northern California based on her newly founded faith, Earthseed. The fledgling community provides refuge for outcasts facing persecution after the election of an ultra-conservative president who vows to "make America great again." In an increasingly divided and dangerous nation, Lauren's subversive colony--a minority religious faction led by a young black woman--becomes a target for President Jarret's reign of terror and oppression.

Years later, Asha Vere reads the journals of a mother she never knew, Lauren Olamina. As she searches for answers about her own past, she also struggles to reconcile with the legacy of a mother caught between her duty to her chosen family and her calling to lead humankind into a better future.

Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2023 by Time (#1), Vulture, and Publishers Weekly, and one of the Best Books of 2023 by The New York Times, the New Yorker, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire, the Chicago Tribune, Kirkus, Lit Hub, and Amazon. National Bestseller. Winner of the 2023 Brooklyn Library Prize and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.

"A major novel, and a notably audacious one." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"It feels fairly rare for a novel to be hugely intelligent and moving and fun in equal measure, but with Biography of X, Catherine Lacey somehow--magically--makes the nearly impossible look easy." --Lauren Groff

From one of our fiercest stylists, a roaring epic chronicling the life, times, and secrets of a notorious artist.

When X--an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter--falls dead in her office, her widow, CM, wild with grief and refusing everyone's good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM knows where X was born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora's box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, and which finally, in the present day, is being forced into an uneasy reunification.

A masterfully constructed literary adventure complete with original images assembled by X's widow, Biography of X follows CM as she traces X's peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America's divided territories, and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from Bowie and Waits to Sontag and Acker. At last, when she finally understands the scope of X's defining artistic project, CM realizes her wife's deceptions were far crueler than she imagined.

Pulsing with suspense and intellect while blending nonfiction and fiction, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love. In her most ambitious novel yet, Catherine Lacey pushes her craft to its highest level, introducing us to an unforgettable character who, in her tantalizing mystery, shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST - This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living?

NAMED ONE OF PASTE'S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE - NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review - People - NPR - The Washington Post - Slate - Harper's Bazaar - Time Out New York - Publishers Weekly - BookPage

Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

A novel about the magical lure of books and summoning the courage to rewrite our stories by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Keeper of Happy Endings and The Last of the Moon Girls.

Rare-book dealer Ashlyn Greer's affinity for books extends beyond the intoxicating scent of old paper, ink, and leather. She can feel the echoes of the books' previous owners--an emotional fingerprint only she can read. When Ashlyn discovers a pair of beautifully bound volumes that appear to have never been published, her gift quickly becomes an obsession. Not only is each inscribed with a startling incrimination, but the authors, Hemi and Belle, tell conflicting sides of a tragic romance.

With no trace of how these mysterious books came into the world, Ashlyn is caught up in a decades-old literary mystery, beckoned by two hearts in ruins, whoever they were, wherever they are. Determined to learn the truth behind the doomed lovers' tale, she reads on, following a trail of broken promises and seemingly unforgivable betrayals. The more Ashlyn learns about Hemi and Belle, the nearer she comes to bringing closure to their love story--and to the unfinished chapters of her own life.

OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK - A HARPERS BAZAAR BEST BOOK OF 2022 - A PARADE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK - A MARIE CLAIRE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK

"It's clear from the first page that Davis is going to serve a more intimate, unpolished account than is typical of the average (often ghost-written) celebrity memoir; Finding Me reads like Davis is sitting you down for a one-on-one conversation about her life, warts and all."--USA Today

"[A] fulfilling narrative of struggle and success....Her gorgeous storytelling will inspire anyone wishing to shed old labels."--Los Angeles Times

In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever.

This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn't always see me.

As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you.

Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.

A USA Today bestseller

A lonely shopkeeper takes it upon herself to solve a murder in the most peculiar way in this captivating mystery by Jesse Q. Sutanto, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties.

Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady--ah, lady of a certain age--who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco's Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.

Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing--a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn't know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of . . . swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer.

What Vera does not expect is to form friendships with her customers and start to care for each and every one of them. As a protective mother hen, will she end up having to give one of her newfound chicks to the police?