My Dark Vanessa

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “[An] exceedingly complex, inventive, resourceful examination of harm and power.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice “A lightning rod . . . brilliantly crafted.”—The Washington Post A most anticipated book by The New York Times • USA Today • Entertainment Weekly • Marie Claire • Elle • Harper's Bazaar • Bustle • Newsweek • New York Post • Esquire • Real Simple • The Sunday Times • The Guardian Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer. 2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher. 2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed? Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Wendy C. Ortiz was an only child and a bookish, insecure girl living with alcoholic parents in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her relationship with a charming and deeply flawed private school teacher fifteen years her senior appeared to give her the kind of power teenagers wish for, regardless of consequences. Her teacher—now a registered sex offender—continually encouraged her passion for writing while making her promise she was not leaving any written record about their dangerous sexual relationship. This conflicted relationship with her teacher may have been just five years long, but would imprint itself on her and her later relationships, queer and straight, for the rest of her life. In EXCAVATION: A MEMOIR, the black and white of the standard victim/perpetrator stereotype gives way to unsettling grays. The present- day narrator reflects on the girl she once was, as well as the teacher and parent she has become. It's a beautifully written and powerful story of a woman reclaiming her whole heart.

In the vein of The Couple Next Door, a debut psychological thriller about a woman who moves with her family to the gothic seaside house where her husband grew up -- and where 15 years ago another family was brutally slaughtered. For Sarah and Patrick, family life has always been easy, until her mother's death sends Sarah spiraling into depression. When she overdoses on sleeping pills, Sarah insists it was an accident, but neither Patrick nor their teenage children believe her. Determined to give their family a fresh start, Patrick convinces her to move back to the idyllic beachside home where he grew up. But there's a catch: The once-beautiful old house is now known as the Murder House. It has been standing empty for fifteen years, ever since another family was brutally slaughtered within its walls. Nostalgic for his childhood, Patrick is adamant that this can be their "dream home" again. Sarah tries to bring it back to its original warmth, but as locals hint that the house is haunted, the children begin having nightmares, strange writing appears on the walls, and creepy "gifts" suddenly arrive on the doorstep at odd hours. With the news that the murderer has been paroled, Sarah can't shake the feeling that something just isn't right. Not with the house, not with the town, not even with her own loving husband--whose stories about his perfect childhood suddenly aren't adding up. Can Sarah uncover the secrets of the Murder House before another family is destroyed? With an irresistible, fog-drenched atmosphere that hides its knife-sharp twists, Vanessa Savage's THE WOMAN IN THE DARK is the perfect new read for fans of I Let You Go and The Couple Next Door, a chilling psychological thriller about a dark family dysfunction and the secrets that haunt us.

From The Social cohost Cynthia Loyst, a deeply personal lifestyle book about how to take the guilt out of pleasure and get to the heart of what you need and want in all aspects of life—from family, home, and work to love and sex. Find Your Pleasure is a pleasure revolution: where society has told women to feel guilty or ashamed for embracing pleasures, Cynthia Loyst shows you how to get to the heart of what you need and want, in every aspect of life. Live: Uncover the beauty of everyday moments, celebrate family and friends, find fun and satisfaction in your workdays, and enjoy the immense rewards parenting has to offer—all while being mindful of taking care of yourself. Love: Cynthia reveals everything from learning to enjoy your body more, ways to feel intimate and communicate effectively with your partner, and the keys to having better sex. Inspire: Find out how to let your creative self bloom, seek out exciting new pathways in life, and let kindness guide you with Cynthia’s tips and tricks for mastering mindfulness and meditation. Through her insightful anecdotes, Cynthia empowers women to revel in all of life’s joys, even the messy ones. Filled with beautiful color photographs, Find Your Pleasure is a treat for the soul that you can devour in one go or savor in tiny bites.

A National Book Critics Circle Leonard Prize Finalist Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, BuzzFeed, The Washington Post, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, NPR, NYLON, Huffington Post, Kirkus Reviews, Barnes & Noble Chosen for the Book of the Month Club, Nylon Book Club, and Belletrist Book Club Named an Indie Next Pick and a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick The story of two girls and the wild year that will cost one her life, and define the other’s for decades Everything about fifteen-year-old Cat’s new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat is quickly drawn into Marlena’s orbit and as she catalogues a litany of firsts—first drink, first cigarette, first kiss, first pill—Marlena’s habits harden and calcify. Within the year, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby. Now, decades later, when a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, Cat must try again to move on, even as the memory of Marlena calls her back. Told in a haunting dialogue between past and present, Marlena is an unforgettable story of the friendships that shape us beyond reason and the ways it might be possible to pull oneself back from the brink.

“Consent” is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury...By every conceivable metric, her book is a triumph.” -- The New York Times Already an international literary sensation, an intimate and powerful memoir of a young French teenage girl’s relationship with a famous, much older male writer—a universal #MeToo story of power, manipulation, trauma, recovery, and resiliency that exposes the hypocrisy of a culture that has allowed the sexual abuse of minors to occur unchecked. Sometimes, all it takes is a single voice to shatter the silence of complicity. Thirty years ago, Vanessa Springora was the teenage muse of one of the country’s most celebrated writers, a footnote in the narrative of a very influential man in the French literary world. At the end of 2019, as women around the world began to speak out, Vanessa, now in her forties and the director of one of France’s leading publishing houses, decided to reclaim her own story, offering her perspective of those events sharply known. Consent is the story of one precocious young girl’s stolen adolescence. Devastating in its honesty, Vanessa’s painstakingly memoir lays bare the cultural attitudes and circumstances that made it possible for a thirteen-year-old girl to become involved with a fifty-year-old man who happened to be a notable writer. As she recalls the events of her childhood and her seduction by one of her country’s most notable writers, Vanessa reflects on the ways in which this disturbing relationship changed and affected her as she grew older. Drawing parallels between children’s fairy tales and French history and her personal life, Vanessa offers an intimate and absorbing look at the meaning of love and consent and the toll of trauma and the power of healing in women’s lives. Ultimately, she offers a forceful indictment of a chauvinistic literary world that has for too long accepted and helped perpetuate gender inequality and the exploitation and sexual abuse of children. Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer "...One of the belated truths that emerges from [Consent] is that Springora is a writer. [...]Her sentences gleam like metal; each chapter snaps shut with the clean brutality of a latch." -- The New Yorker "Consent [is] rapier-sharp, written with restraint, elegance and brevity." -- The Times (London) "[Consent] has something steely in its heart, and it departs from the typical American memoir of childhood abuse in exhilarating ways." -- Slate "Lucid and nuanced...[Consent] will speak to trauma survivors everywhere." -- Los Angeles Review of Books ”A piercing memoir about the sexually abusive relationship she endured at age 14 with a 50-year-old writer...This chilling account will linger with readers long after the last page is turned.” -- Publishers Weekly "Springora's lucid account is a commanding discussion of sexual abuse and victimization, and a powerful act of reclamation." -- Booklist "A chilling story of child abuse and the sophisticated Parisians who looked the other way...[Springora] is an elegant and perceptive writer." -- Kirkus

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

“Exquisite” (Lisa Barr, New York Times best-selling author of Woman on Fire) and “utterly engrossing” (Katherine Gray, cohost of the Netflix series Blown Away), The Color of Ice will wrap you in its spell, all the way to its unforgettable ending. Set among the glaciers and thermal lagoons of Iceland, and framed by the magical art of glassblowing, The Color of Ice is the breathtaking story of a woman's awakening to passion, beauty, and the redemptive power of unconditional love. The stunning new novel by the author of award-winning novels Queen of the Owls and The Sound Between the Notes . . . Cathryn McAllister, a freelance photographer, travels to Iceland for a photo shoot with an enigmatic artist who wants to capture the country’s iconic blue icebergs in glass. Her plan is to head out, when the job is done, on a carefully curated “best of Iceland” solo vacation. Widowed young, Cathryn has raised two children while achieving professional success. If the price of that efficiency has been the dimming of her fire—well, she hasn’t let herself think about it. Until now. Bit by bit, Cathryn abandons her itinerary to remain with Mack, the glassblower, who awakens a hunger for all the things she’s told herself she doesn’t need anymore. Passion. Vulnerability. Risk. Cathryn finds herself torn between the life—and self—she’s come to know and the new world Mack offers. Commitments await her back in America. But if she walks away, she’ll lose this chance to feel deeply again. Just when her path seems clear, she’s faced with a shocking discovery—and a devastating choice that shows her what love really is.