The Afterparty

"A vintage version of 'Gossip Girl' meets bigger hair." —The Skimm "DiSclafani’s story sparkles like the jumbo diamonds her characters wear to one-up each other. Historical fiction lovers will linger over every lush detail." —People From the bestselling author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls comes a story of lifelong female friendship – in all its intimate agony and joy – set within a world of wealth, beauty, and expectation. Joan Fortier is the epitome of Texas glamour and the center of the 1950s Houston social scene. Tall, blonde, beautiful, and strong, she dominates the room and the gossip columns. Every man wants her; every woman wants to be her. Devoted to Joan since childhood, Cece Buchanan is either her chaperone or her partner in crime, depending on whom you ask. But when Joan’s radical behavior escalates the summer they are twenty-five, Cece considers it her responsibility to bring her back to the fold, ultimately forcing one provocative choice to appear the only one there is. A thrilling glimpse into the sphere of the rich and beautiful at a memorable moment in history, The After Party unfurls a story of friendship as obsessive, euphoric, consuming, and complicated as any romance.

Literary agent Valerie Morrell receives an email from prospective author William Mendez, containing the first chapters of a promising new novel. Mendez's book tells the story of an April night, when a nervous, nerdy journalist takes his boss's invitation to an A-list party and meets a reclusive film star, his junkie supermodel wife and a wide-eyed pop singer. Valerie is hooked by the scandalous tale of decadence, drugs and disasters, but as the book unfolds, chapter by chapter, email by email, building to a terrible climax, a parallel story emerges - of an author with an unusual, almost unreal, desire for anonymity. Who is William Mendez? And whose tale is he really telling... WITH PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN MATERIAL FOR THE PAPERBACK LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE

Three women form an unbreakable bond in a sexy, suspenseful, and adventurous novel about empowerment and sisterhood through thick and thin. Venus McGee, Draya Carter, and Jackie Benson are coworkers with a lot in common. They're smart, independent, driven, and deserving of recognition--certainly more than they've been handed by a demoralizing boss. He's the topic of conversation at their impromptu get-together after the company holiday party, where the threesome fantasizes about a life without him. There has to be an alternative to taking a deep breath and sucking it up. There is. It's just not the one they expected. When morning comes, Venus, Draya, and Jackie are blindsided by murder--a twist of fate that brings a startling new challenge to the table and forces them to navigate a hair-raising detour they never saw coming. For better and (unless they can help it) for worse, it's going to turn their world upside down. What starts as a necessary bond of mutual trust soon morphs into an empowering and galvanizing friendship that Venus, Draya, and Jackie need now more than ever.

Tired of always being the good girl, Emma forms a friendship with fun and alluring Siobhan, but Siobhan's dangerous lifestyle becomes more than Emma can handle.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE’S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK WINNER OF THE FERRO-GRUMLEY AWARD FOR LGBTQ FICTION Named a Best Book of the Year by: New York Times * NPR * Washington Post * LA Times * Kirkus Reviews * New York Public Library * Chicago Public Library * Harper’s Bazaar * TIME * Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air * Boston Globe* The Atlantic A vibrant story collection about Cambodian-American life—immersive and comic, yet unsparing—that offers profound insight into the intimacy of queer and immigrant communities Seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tenderhearted, balancing acerbic humor with sharp emotional depth, Afterparties offers an expansive portrait of the lives of Cambodian-Americans. As the children of refugees carve out radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship, and family. A high school badminton coach and failing grocery store owner tries to relive his glory days by beating a rising star teenage player. Two drunken brothers attend a wedding afterparty and hatch a plan to expose their shady uncle’s snubbing of the bride and groom. A queer love affair sparks between an older tech entrepreneur trying to launch a “safe space” app and a disillusioned young teacher obsessed with Moby-Dick. And in the sweeping final story, a nine-year-old child learns that his mother survived a racist school shooter. The stories in Afterparties, “powered by So’s skill with the telling detail, are like beams of wry, affectionate light, falling from different directions on a complicated, struggling, beloved American community” (George Saunders).

A science fiction thriller, award-winning author Daryl Gregory's Afterparty features a scientist on a mind-bending and violent chase across Canada and the U.S. to undue the harm her creation has done and save civilization. It begins in Toronto, in the years after the smart drug revolution. Any high school student with a chemjet and internet connection can download recipes and print drugs, or invent them. A seventeen-year-old street girl finds God through a new brain-altering drug called Numinous, used as a sacrament by a new Church that preys on the underclass. But she is arrested and put into detention, and without the drug, commits suicide. Lyda Rose, another patient in that detention facility, has a dark secret: she was one of the original scientists who developed the drug. With the help of an ex-government agent and an imaginary, drug-induced doctor, Lyda sets out to find the other three survivors of the five who made the Numinous in a quest to set things right. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

"A truly moving book." —John Ashbery Jana Prikryl’s The After Party journeys across borders and eras, from cold war Central Europe to present-day New York City, from ancient Rome to New World suburbs, constantly testing the lingua francas we negotiate to know ourselves. These poems disclose the tensions in our inherited identities and showcase Prikryl’s ambitious experimentation with style. “Thirty Thousand Islands,” the second half of the collection, presents some forty linked poems that incorporate numerous voices. Rooted in one place that fragments into many places—the remote shores of Lake Huron in Canada, a region with no natural resources aside from its beauty—these poems are an elegy that speaks beyond grief. Penetrating, vital, and visionary, The After Party marks the arrival of an extraordinary new talent.

From the New York Times bestselling author Simone Elkeles comes an epic love story like no other . . . First in the gripping PERFECT CHEMISTRY series, this is the next addictive read for fans of Anna Todd's AFTER series, and Caroline Kepnes's YOU. When Brittany Ellis walks into chemistry class on the first day of senior year, she has no clue that her carefully created 'perfect' life is about to unravel before her eyes. Forced to be lab partners with Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town, Brittany finds herself having to protect everything she's worked so hard for – her flawless reputation, her relationship with her boyfriend and, most importantly, the secret that her home life is anything but perfect. Alex is a bad boy and he knows it. So when he makes a bet with his friends to lure Brittany into his life, he thinks nothing of it. But the closer Alex and Brittany get to each other the more they realise that sometimes appearances can be deceptive and that you have to look beneath the surface to discover the truth. 'Compelling and addictive… I've still got that "wow" feeling you get after reading a great book' Wondrousreads.com 'Perfect Chemistry is a novel to obsess about. It is a book that you should drop everything for...the most romantic love story that I have ever read.' Thebookette.com 'Captures that rush of feelings associated with first love' Thebookbag.com 'Elkeles pens plenty of tasteful, hot scenes…that keep the pages turning. The author definitely knows how to write romance.' Kirkus Review