**A LitHub and Largehearted Boy Best Book of the YearA LGBTQ Book That Will Change The Literary Landscape in 2021 —O, The Oprah MagazineA Vulture Best Short Book"Piercing. It shook me, and it made me see.”—Victor LaValle**Summer 1999. Long Island, New York. Bored, restless, and lonely, Ali never expected her life would change as dramatically as it did the day she walked into the local Stop & Shop. But she’s never met anyone like Justine, the store’s...

A surprisingly scandalous and vibrantly illustrated chain of entanglements (romantic and otherwise) between some of our best-loved writers and artists of the twentieth century.Poet Robert Lowell died of a heart attack, clutching a portrait of his lover, Caroline Blackwood, painted by her ex-husband, Lucian Freud. Lowell was on his way to see his own ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick, who was a longtime friend of Mary McCarthy. McCarthy left the father of her child to mar...