12 results for "Love"

The Free People’s Village

Kern, Sim
USA TODAY BESTSELLER ― NOW IN PAPERBACK! From environmental journalist and founder of the #TransRightsReadathon Sim Kern, comes the eat-the-rich climate fiction you won't want to put down: In an alternate 2020 timeline, Al Gore won the 2000 election and declared a War on Climate Change rather than a War on Terror. For twenty years, Democrats have controlled all three branches of government, enacting carbon-cutting schemes that never made it to a vote in our world. Green infrastructure projects have transformed U.S. cities into lush paradises (for the wealthy, white neighborhoods, at least), and the Bureau of Carbon Regulation levies carbon taxes on every financial transaction. English teacher by day, Maddie Ryan spends her nights and weekends as the rhythm guitarist of Bunny Bloodlust, a queer punk band living in a warehouse-turned-venue called “The Lab” in Houston’s Eighth Ward. When Maddie learns that the Eighth Ward is to be sacrificed for a new electromagnetic hyperway out to the wealthy, white suburbs, she joins “Save the Eighth,” a Black-led organizing movement fighting for the neighborhood. At first, she’s only focused on keeping her band together and getting closer to Red, their reckless and enigmatic lead guitarist. But working with Save the Eighth forces Maddie to reckon with the harm she has already done to the neighborhood―both as a resident of the gentrifying Lab and as a white teacher in a predominantly Black school. When police respond to Save the Eighth protests with violence, the Lab becomes the epicenter of “The Free People’s Village”―an occupation that promises to be the birthplace of an anti-capitalist revolution. As the movement spreads across the U.S., Maddie dreams of a queer, liberated future with Red. But the Village is beset on all sides―by infighting, police brutality, corporate-owned media, and rising ecofascism. Maddie’s found family is increasingly at risk from state violence, and she must decide if she’s willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of justice. P R A I S E "Incisive and insightful." ―Texas Monthly “Sim Kern’s masterpiece burns with righteous fury. This book doesn’t pull punches ― instead of hopelessness, it sliced straight through frustration, fatalism, and ennui and made me want to fight back.” ―Shana Hausman, All She Wrote Books “Achingly real, bitterly funny, and deeply moving, The Free People’s Village is a commentary, both compassionate and cutting, on the woke white activist’s journey and, above all, a full-throated ode to resistance and the found family that fuels it.” ―Megan Bell, Southern Bookseller Review “The Free People’s Village tackles many social and environmental issues at once without feeling heavy or prescriptive, focusing on personal stories amid the larger ones it tells about capitalism, climate, and activism. Its commentary never comes off as rote or tedious, bolstered by humor and humanity.” ― Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya for Autostraddle "Full of furious kindness, radical community, passionate politics, and authentic friendships, The Free People's Village is a sharply-written paean to hope, set in a vivid, brilliantly imagined future that alternately filled me with loathing and yearning. From the carefully crafted timelines to the intensely real characters, this was a story that yanked me into its world and didn't let me surface for hours. You live because you still can, and you organize because you still can, and you fight because you still can." ―Premee Mohamed, Nebula Award-winning author of And What Can We Offer You Tonight “A thought-provoking, exciting ride. The Free People's Village is a mesmerizing portrait of revolutions ― the internal ones that call us to find and fight for the best versions of ourselves; the external that consume, invigorate, and demand as they explore paths to justice. Grounded in an imaginative landscape and rounded out by an inclusive, complex cast, this novel masterfully explores identity, morality, and the choices we make as vehicles that hold radical power in the quest for liberation. More than a love letter to Houston, its bayous, and people forgotten and remembered, Sim Kern's world sings with possibility, hope, and joy that will leave you laughing--and crying ― long after the last bomb has dropped." ―Ehigbor Okosun, author of Forged by Blood "Beautiful, brilliant, and unflinching, The Free People's Village will both inspire you and devour you...in the best possible way." ―Nicky Drayden, author of Escaping Exodus and The Prey of Gods
Lantern Paperbacks 2024-09-24 416 pages

Yr Dead

Sam Sax
Now in paperback! Winner of the 2025 IPPY Award for literary fiction. Longlisted for the National Book Award. Named a top debut novel of 2024 by Kirkus , and a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year finalist. In between the space of time when Ezra lights themself on fire and when Ezra dies the world of this book flashes before their eyes. Everyone Ezra's ever loved, every place they've felt queer and at home, or queer and out of place, reveals itself in an instant. Unfolding in fragments of memory, Ezra dissolves into the family, religion, desire, losses, pains and joys that made them into the person that's decided on this final act of protest. Told in lyric fragments that span both lifetimes and geography, Yr Dead is a queer, Jewish, diasporic coming of age story that questions how our historical memory shapes our political and emotional present. Visceral, propulsive, and at turns fluorescently beautiful and fluorescently tragic, Yr Dead is the electric debut novel from award-winning writer Sam Sax , one of our most dynamic and imaginative writers.
McSweeney's 2025-09-02 283 pages

Fable for the end of the world

Reid, Ava
By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society. Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt, enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus's livestreamed assassination spectacle : the Lamb's Gauntlet. Melinoe is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks. When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs, the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she's had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother she might stand a chance of staying alive. For Melinoe, this is a game she can't afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption. As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything : Inesa wonders if there's more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she's capable of more than killing. And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2025-03-04 371 pages

Hello, Cruel World 101+ Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws

Kate Bornstein
This 20th anniversary edition of transsexual trailblazer Kate Bornstein’s unconventional guide to staying alive for teens, freaks and gender outlaws features 20 NEW Alternatives, a new foreword by the author, and a new afterword by Paul Preciado. "A don't-hurt guide for anyone who's been tempted to give in to despair."— Time Out New York "You'll want to keep extra copies of this one on the shelf to give away to friends in need." — Bitch magazine Now updated and with new material Hello, Cruel World features a catalog of 121 alternatives to suicide that range from the playful (moisturize!), to the irreverent (shatter some family values), to the controversial, fun, challenging and easy. Encouraging readers to unleash their hearts' harmless desires, the book has only one directive: "Don't be mean." It is this guiding principle that brings the reader on a self-validating journey and toward a resounding decision to embrace life. Using graphics and checklists, and with great humor and gutsiness, Kate Bornstein dares readers to re-envision the gender system as we know it. She offers stories and insights that are tenderly intimate and unapologetically edgy. Hello, Cruel World also includes: an Introduction by Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara The Hello Cruel Scale of Feelings an Index of Alternatives with safety and effectiveness scales Suicide rates among LGBTQ+ teens are much higher than for their cis peers; with love and humor and confession and insight, Bornstein hopes to keep every freak out there alive. She is a radical role model, an affectionate best friend, and a guiding mentor all in one. This one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive is a much-needed, sometimes unorthodox approach to life for those who want to stay on the edge, and alive. Finalist, LGBT Nonfiction Lambda Literary Award, 2009 Honor Book, Stonewall Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award, 2009
Seven Stories Press 2025-04-29 288 pages

What Is Wrong with You? A Novel

Paul Rudnick
“[A] rollicking farce about the things we do for love...A perfect book for this moment.” — People “The genuinely hilarious Paul Rudnick” (Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author) returns with a witty, insightful new novel about the joy, delight, pain, and absurdity of love in an age of cynicism, divorce, and digital madness. A tech billionaire and the flight attendant he’s marrying. A TV superhero who used to be married to the flight attendant. A Manhattan book editor and the sensitivity associate who got him fired. A twenty-three-year-old wild child prodigy who’s perhaps the savior of American literature. A vengeful Arkansas sheriff who sells a vitamin-enriched, ten-pounds-off-today demulsifier. A Wall Street bro who raps on TikTok. Two dentists—possibly stalking each other. What do these people have in common? Invited or not, they’re all headed to the most anticipated destination wedding ever, on the billionaire’s private island, to seek romance, to cause mayhem, and to figure out everyone else’s futures and maybe even their own. Find out what happens in Paul Rudnick’s heartfelt new novel, which dares to pose the question essential to anyone who’s ever been in love: What Is Wrong with You?
Atria Books 2026-03-31 336 pages

City of Laughter

Temim Fruchter
A rich and riveting debut spanning four generations of Eastern European Jewish women bound by blood, half-hidden secrets, and the fantastical visitation of a shapeshifting stranger over the course of 100 years An ambitious, delirious novel that tangles with queerness, spirituality, and generational silence, City of Laughter announces Temim Fruchter as a fresh and assured new literary voice. The tale of a young queer woman stuck in a thicket of generational secrets, the novel follows her back to her family's origins, where ancestral clues begin to reveal a lineage both haunted and shaped by desire. Ropshitz, Poland, was once known as the City of Laughter. As this story opens, an 18th century badchan, a holy jester whose job is to make wedding guests laugh, receives a visitation from a mysterious stranger--bringing the laughter the people of Ropshitz desperately need, and triggering a sequence of events that will reverberate across the coming century. In the present day, Shiva Margolin, recovering from the heartbreak of her first big queer love and grieving the death of her beloved father, struggles to connect with her guarded mother, who spends most of her time at the local funeral home. A student of Jewish folklore, Shiva seizes an opportunity to visit Poland, hoping her family's mysteries will make more sense if she walks in the footsteps of her great-grandmother Mira, about whom no one speaks. What she finds will make her question not only her past and her future, but also her present. Electric and sharply intimate, City of Laughter zigzags between our universe and a tapestry of real and invented Jewish folklore, asking how far we can travel from the stories that have raised us without leaving them behind.
Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated 2025-01-14 400 pages

Who knew

Diller, Barry
"Growing up in Beverly Hills, Diller was neglected by his parents, abused by his brother, and overwhelmed by insecurity. Diller began his career in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency and had one of the most extraordinary ascents in show business history, inventing the TV Movie of the Week for ABC at age twenty-seven, becoming CEO of Paramount Pictures at age thirty-two, and launching the Fox TV network at age forty-four. . . . Diller shares his provocative and at times counterintuitive insights about advancing in a company; becoming a manager and a leader; and the value of confrontation. He describes his relentless quest for good ideas along with what he learned from the bad ones. For the first time, Diller also tells the story of his unconventional and very private personal life, describing relationships with men and the woman he calls his 'unique and complete love,' designer Diane von Furstenberg. Diller writes, 'I would have secrets, but I would tell no lies'"--
Simon & Schuster 2025-05-20 336 pages

Orlanda

Harpman, Jacqueline
The groundbreaking novel about a woman whose subconscious mind splinters and finds itself in the body of a young man, from the author of I Who Have Never Known Men . Now in paperback with a new foreword by Isle McElroy for the 30th anniversary of its original publication. One afternoon in a café across the Gare du Nord train station in Paris, Aline Berger, a literature professor, struggles to re-read Virginia Woolf’s Orlando , when an odd feeling comes over her. Suddenly, part of her consciousness splits off and finds itself in the body of an attractive young man named Lucien Lèfrene, who works as a rock journalist. In this newfound body, Aline’s splintered mind names themselves Orlanda in homage to Virginia Woolf as a woman who has now become a man. Orlanda begins to follow Aline. And when the two meet again in Belgium, Aline subconsciously sheds her prim tendencies for a more assertive presence, as she begins to understand that Orlanda was born from her own psyche. Orlanda is the assertive, confident, and amorous person, who loves men unabashedly, that Aline has always aspired to be but could never become. The more time the two spend together, the less time they can stand to be apart. This lyrical novel is a stunning portrait of a woman who is forced to confront every part of her soul and embrace herself fully.
SEVEN STORIES PRESS 2025-09-30 224 pages

The Host

Rosen, Selina
Investigative reporter Jane Weston has a problem. Wherever she goes, the undead follow. They’ve cost her several well-paying, high-profile jobs in metropolitan areas, but she was sure that she would escape them when she took a job at WGBN in Jones Port, Arkansas. No such luck! It seems these blood-sucking night dwellers will follow their “host” to the end of the civilized world - and even beyond. Tracy Cohen is the rabbi of the small Jewish congregation in Jones Port. Tracy lost a lover to gang violence in New York and was rejected by her orthodox family because of her sexual orientation. Tracy’s life has been filled with turmoil, but nothing has prepared her to do battle with the undead in the streets of Jones Port, for the soul of an investigative reporter. Good Isn’t Stupid!
Yard Dog Press 2023-01-08 193 pages