Anna Dorn

Emily Forrest runs the hottest astrology account on Instagram, @Exalted, but astrology is on the outs, and her finances are dwindling. Emily doesn't even really believe in astrology, despite her gift for deciphering the moons and signs, until she comes across a birth-chart that could potentially change her mind. Beau Rubidoux's chart has all the planets in their right places--it is exalted. She decides that Tres could potentially be the love of her life and begins following him around Los Angeles in hopes of getting close to him and catching his eye. Meanwhile, in Riverside, CA, Dawn Webster has been dumped once again. At 48, she is forced to return to the diner where she started waiting tables at 18. With no girlfriend, no career, and her only son gone to Hollywood, the once-vivacious Dawn is aimless and alone. Persona non-grata at the local lesbian bar, she guzzles cheap champagne and peruses @Exalted to feel seen. When Dawn spots her son's estranged father one day during a work break, she decides to track him down and reshape the flailing course of her life. Told from Emily and Dawn's alternating points of view, Exalted is a deliciously dark novel that explores desire, the projection of love, and what we're really searching for when we keep scrolling. Anna Dorn's signature wit and biting social commentary takes readers across Southern California until Emily and Dawn's shocking connection is finally revealed.

Exalted

A controversial LA author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Having recently moved both herself and her formidable perfume bottle collection into a tiny bungalow in Los Angeles, mid-list author Astrid Dahl finds herself back in the Zoom writer’s group she cofounded, Sapphic Scribes, after an incident that leaves her and her career lightly canceled. But she temporarily forgets all that by throwing herself into a few sexy distractions—like Ivy, a grad student researching 1950s lesbian pulp who smells like metallic orchids, or her new neighbor, Penelope, who smells like patchouli. Penelope, a painter living off Urban Outfitters settlement money, immediately ingratiates herself in Astrid’s life, bonding with her best friends and family, just as Astrid and Ivy begin to date in person. Astrid feels judged and threatened by Penelope, a responsible older vegan, but also finds her irresistibly sexy. When Astrid receives an unexpected call from her agent with the news that actress and influencer Kat Gold wants to adapt her previous novel for TV, Astrid finally has a chance to resurrect her waning career. But the pressure causes Astrid’s worst vice to rear its head—the Patricia Highsmith, a blend of Adderall, alcohol, and cigarettes—and results in blackouts and a disturbing series of events. Unapologetically feminine yet ribald, steamy yet hilarious, Anna Dorn has crafted an exquisite homage to the lesbian pulp of yore, reclaiming it for our internet and celebrity-obsessed world. With notes of Southern California citrus and sultry smokiness, Perfume and Pain is a satirical romp through Hollywood and lesbian melodrama.

A Novel

Perfume and Pain

A hilarious and scathing look at the tensions between creativity and success in the era of Instagram

Vagablonde

"In the tradition of How to Murder Your Life, a young woman's witty memoir demystifying law school and lawyers through tales of her own badness, the badness of her peers, and the badness of the law in general"--

A Memoir of Law and Disorder

Bad Lawyer

Myriam Gurba

Alissa Nutting

SJ Sindu

Maame Blue

Sam Cohen

Venita Blackburn

Marisa Crane

Aurora Mattia

Priya Guns

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

Soula Emmanuel

Temim Fruchter

Myriam Lacroix

Kristel Emma Buckley

Molly Llewellyn with Emily Austin

francesca ekwuyasi

A follow-up to their runaway success Peach Pit: Sixteen Stories of Unsavory Women, editors Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley return with Be Gay, Do Crime, a celebration of queer chaos from an all-queer author lineup featuring Myriam Gurba, Emily Austin, Alissa Nutting, and Francesca Ekwuyasi

A trans woman makes increasingly frequent hoax calls to a business where she's had a negative experience, watching the consequences with perverse joy. A group of aging queers turns to bank robbery to stop the sale of their bungalow complex to a development company. As the president prepares to give a speech, two women lurk among the journalists, ready to shoot him. And an aspiring author takes to stealing items from strangers’ homes in a kind of cosmic redistribution each time one of her relationships fail.

In sixteen brilliant, wild-eyed stories, Be Gay, Do Crime delivers a celebration and reckoning of why queer people turn to crime–unintentionally, as a means of survival, as protest, as rescue, or to right injustices big and small.

Sixteen Stories of Queer Chaos

Be Gay, Do Crime

Anna Dorn

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