Housemates

Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg is the story of friendship, love and photography in Philadelphia. 

When Bernie replies to Leah’s ad for a new housemate in Philadelphia, the two begin an intense and defiantly uncategorizable friendship based on a mutual belief in their art, and one another. Both aspire to capture the world around them: Leah through her writing; Bernie through her photography.

After Bernie’s former photography professor, the renowned yet tarnished Daniel Dunn, dies and leaves her a complicated inheritance, Leah volunteers to accompany Bernie to his home in rural Pennsylvania, turning the jaunt into a road trip with an ambitious mission: to document America through words and photographs.

What ensues is a journey into the heart of the nation, bringing the housemates into conversation with people from all walks of life—“the absurd dreamers and failures of this wide, wide country”—as they try to make sense of the times they are living in. Along the way, Leah and Bernie discover what it means to chase their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace what they are capable of both romantically and artistically.

Warm and insightful, Housemates is a story of youth and freedom—a glorious celebration of queer life, and how art and love might save us all.

Eisenberg, Emma Copley. (2024). Housemates. New York: Hogarth

Jellyfish Have No Ears

Jellyfish Have No Ears by Adele Rosenfeld, translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman, is a novel of the authors process of going deaf. 

Louise has always felt adrift between communities: not deaf enough to be a part of Deaf culture, not hearing enough to be fully within the hearing world. Hearing, for Louise, is inseparable from reading other people's lips. Through sight, she perceives words and strings them together like pearls to reconstruct a conversation.

Then an audiology exam shows that most of her hearing has gone, and her doctor suggests a cochlear implant. With this irreversible intervention, Louise would gain a new, synthetic sense of hearing - but she would lose what remains of her natural hearing, which has shaped her unique relationship with the world, full of whispers and shadows.

As she weighs the prospect of surgery, she must also contend with the chaotic reality of her life as she falls in love, suffers through her first job, and steadies herself with friends.

A masterclass in wordplay and language's possibilities and limitations, this fiercely original debut plunges readers into Louise's world as she grapples with loss, and considers what she might gain in the process.

Rosenfeld, Adele. (2024). Jellyfish Have No Ears. Minneapolis: Greywolf Press. 

The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye

The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron is the fictionalized story of a real woman who was one of the more successful pirates of the Caribbean in the mid-1600s.

In the tumultuous town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, Jacquotte Delahaye is an unknown but up-and-coming shipwright. Her dreams are bold but her ambitions are bound by the confines of her life with her self-seeking French father. When her way of life and the delicate balance of power in the town are threatened, she is forced to flee her home and become a woman on the run along with a motley crew of refugees, including a mysterious young woman named Teresa.

Jacquotte and her band become indentured servants to the infamous Blackhand, a ruthless pirate captain who rules his ship with an iron fist. As they struggle to survive his brutality, Jacquotte finds herself unable to resist Teresa despite their differences. When Blackhand hatches a dangerous scheme to steal a Portuguese shipment of jewels, Jacquotte must rely on her wits, resourcefulness, and friends to survive. But she discovers there is a grander, darker scheme of treachery at play, and she ultimately must decide what price she is willing to pay to secure a better future for them all.

An unforgettable tale told in three parts, The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye is a thrilling, buccaneering escapade filled with siege and battle, and is also a tender exploration of friendship, love, and the search for freedom and home.

Cameron, Briony. (2024). The Ballad of Jacquotte Delehaye. New York: Atria Books.

Love at 350º

 

Love at 350º by Lisa Peers is a lesbian romance centered around cooking. 

Kendra Campbell is the owner and chef at a well-known restaurant in Sonoma, CA. She is also a notoriously ruthless judge on a reality cooking contest show, Bake-O-Rama. 

Tori Moore is a high school chemistry teacher. She teaches her students chemistry in a cooking class. Her dream has always been to open a bakery. Her two teenage children secretly enter her into a competition to apply to Bake-O-Rama, where the prize money could help their mom's dream. 

Peers has created a great romance novel with delicious food and attraction.

Peers, Lisa. (2023). Love at 350º. New York: The Dial Press. 

Briefly, A Delicious Life

Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens is an unforgettable glimpse into George Sand's life with Frederic Chopin, via the eyes of a ghost. 

In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when George Sand, her two children, and her lover Frederic Chopin arrive in the village, Blanca is still there: a spirited, funny, righteous ghost, she's been hanging around the monastery since her accidental death, spying on the monks and the townspeople and keeping track of her descendants. 

Blanca is enchanted the moment she sees George, and the magical novel unfolds as a story of deeply felt, unrequited longing - the impossible love of a teenage ghost for a woman who can't see her and doesn't know she exists. As George and Chopin, who wear their unconventionality on their sleeves, find themselves in deepening trouble with the provincial, 19th-century villagers, Blanca watches helplessly and reflects on the circumstances of her own death.

A creative and compelling story written beautifully.

Stevens, Nell. (2022). Briefly, A Delicious Live. New York: Scribner.

Winter's Orbit

Orbit by Everina Maxwell is a gay space romance between people married as a political contract. 

Prince Kiem is a minor royal of the Empire, the least favorite grandson of the Empress. He is about to be married to Count Jainen, a treaty to keep the outlying planets in line. Their marriage is one of the items to get in line before the Empire renews a Resolution with the alien species that keeps them from being invaded by neighbors.

Neither Prince Kiem nor Coutn Jainen want to be married, but understand it is their duty. To add pressure to a new couple who had never met before, there is a conspiracy and a plot to sabotage the Resolution.

Maxwell's novel is everything you could want in a space opera or in a romance story. A great read!

Maxwell, Everina. (2021) Winter's Orbit. New York: Orbit.