Episode #4: "Boy Bands are the Great Equalizer"
On this episode, we're excited to bring you Emma Straub and Rainbow Rowell
Emma Straub is the New York Times-bestselling author of seven books for adults: the novels American Fantasy, This Time Tomorrow, All Adults Here, The Vacationers, Modern Lovers, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married. She is also the author of three picture books: Gaga Mistake Day, which she co-wrote with her mother, Mama Hug, and Very Good Hats. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and her work has been published in more than 20 languages. Emma and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.
Rainbow Rowell is an award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling author. Sometimes she writes about adults (Attachments, Landline, Slow Dance). Sometimes she writes about teenagers (Eleanor & Park, Fangirl). Sometimes — actually, a lot of the time — she writes about lovesick vampires and guys with dragon wings (The Simon Snow Trilogy). Recently, she’s been writing short stories (Scattered Showers) and a whole lot of comics (Runways, Pumpkinheads, Lois and Clark).
Read Along!
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“American Fantasy has everything we need right now: '90s nostalgia, humor, and it is a great escape.” —Jenna Bush Hager on NBC Today Show
"I can hardly remember the last time I read anything that brought me such pure joy.” —Ann Patchett
“American Fantasy is such a fun, delicious, big-hearted book.” —Taylor Jenkins Reid
“Comedy and redemption on the high seas...breezy, tenderhearted.”—New York Times
From New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow, an irresistible story about what happens when your teenage fantasy comes true after you’re already an adult.
When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous, nineties-era boy band and three thousand screaming women who have worshipped them since childhood.
Feeling slightly out of place amid this crowd is Annie, here on a lark to appease her sister. Yet when the lights come up and the idols of her youth begin to sing, something is unlocked. Call it memory. Call it nostalgia. Call it the chemical reaction of hormones, hope, and sexual reawakening. Between the slushy alcoholic drinks, the familiar music, and the throngs of middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. By the time she meets one of the band members—not just a celebrity but someone in need of a friend—she has accessed a new sense of possibility.
In a smart and incisive book packed with laugh-out-loud reflections on fame, aging, and marriage, Emma Straub delivers a richly textured story that shows us real passion is never truly lost, that what we love makes us who we are, and that deep meaning can sometimes be found in a sea of screaming fans.
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"Sexy, messy, funny and raw." —The New York Times
#1 New York Times bestselling author Rainbow Rowell returns with a breathtakingly honest novel about a woman who lost everything — and isn't sure she wants it back.
Everybody knows that Cherry's husband, Tom, is in Hollywood making a movie . . .
Almost nobody knows that he isn't coming home.
Tom is the creator of Thursday—a semi-autobiographical webcomic that's become an international phenomenon.
Semi-autobiographical. That means there's a character in this movie based on Cherry . . . "Baby."
Wide-hipped, heavy-chested, double-chinned Baby.
Cherry never wanted this. No fat girl wants to see herself caricatured on the page—let alone on the big screen. But there's no getting away from it. Baby looks so much like Cherry that strangers recognize her at the grocery store.
While her soon-to-be ex-husband is in Los Angeles getting rich and famous and being the internet's latest boyfriend, Cherry is stuck in Omaha taking care of the dog he always wanted and the house they were going to raise a family in . . . and wondering who she's supposed to be without him.
Cherry had promised to love Tom through thick and thin.
She'd meant it.
One night, Cherry decides to leave all her problems, including Tom's overgrown puppy, at home. She ventures out to see her favorite band play her favorite album . . . and someone recognizes her from across the room.
Russ Sutton knew Cherry when she was a young art student with a fondness for pin-up dresses and patent leather heels. Before Tom.
Russ knows Cherry. He likes Cherry.
And best of all . . . he's never heard of Thursday.
Tender, funny, and utterly human, Cherry Baby is Rainbow Rowell's richest, most surprising—sexiest—novel yet.
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