In her new novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies (Soho Press ), Lambda Literary Fellow SJ Sindu maps one woman’s struggles in navigating love, tradition, and family life: The pleasures and perils of their union serve as a backdrop for Janet’s progression through her early twenties with all the universal growing pains-falling in and out of love, living away from home, and figuring out what she wants to do with her life. Under the neon lights of Club Nu, Janet meets Troy, a yeoman stationed at Pearl Harbor naval base, who becomes her first. Finally content in her body, she vacillates between flaunting and concealing herself as she navigates dating and disclosure, sex and intimacy, and most important, letting herself be truly seen. Janet Mock is adjusting to her days as a first-generation college student at the University of Hawaii and her nights as a dancer at a strip club. The journey begins a few months before her twentieth birthday. Riveting, rousing, and utterly real, Surpassing Certainty is a portrait of a young woman searching for her purpose and place in the world-without a road map to guide her. As he grapples with the turmoil left in his friend’s wake, he is reminded of an imaginary game called Destroyers they played as children-a game, he now realizes, they may have never stopped playing.Īctivist and author Janet Mock’s new book, Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me (Atria Books), is a snapshot of the author’s turbulent young adulthood: When Charlie suddenly vanishes, Ian finds himself caught up in deception after deception. But, like Charlie himself, this beautiful island conceals a darkness beneath, and it isn’t long before the dream begins to fragment. His childhood friend Charlie-rich, exuberant, and basking in the success of his new venture on the island-could be his last hope.Īt first Patmos appears to be a dream-long sun-soaked days on Charlie’s yacht and the reappearance of a girlfriend from Ian’s past-and Charlie readily offers Ian the lifeline he so desperately needs. Amidst prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love?Īuthor Christopher Bollen’s latest novel, The Destroyers (Harper) is a masterful thriller that examines friendship, familial strife, and the intoxicating thrall of wealth and power:Īrriving on the Greek island of Patmos broke and humiliated, Ian Bledsoe is fleeing the emotional and financial fallout from his father’s death. But when he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. In his new novel, Since I Laid My Burden Down (Feminist Press), irreverent writer Brontez Purnell details one young man’s riotous coming of age in 1980s Alabama.ĭeShawn lives a high, creative, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life.
As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. Writer Roxane Gay’s long-awaited memoir Hunger (Harper) is a candid exploration of the writer’s relationship with food and trauma. New in June: Brontez Purnell, Janet Mock, Christopher Bollen, and Roxane Gay