Blob: A Love Story
by Maggie Su
After getting dumped, lonely college dropout Vi Liu discovers a strange blob in an alley outside a bar and takes it home where she works with the increasingly sentient creature and molds it into her ideal partner. But as Vi’s desire to be loved unconditionally threatens to spiral out of control, she is forced to confront her lonely childhood, the ex-boyfriend who has unfriended her, and the racial marginalization that has defined her relationships. Ultimately, Vi embarks on a journey of self-discovery and learns that it’s impossible to control those you love.
Giovanni’s Room: A Novel
by James Baldwin
In the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With sharp, probing insight, James Baldwin’s classic narrative delves into the mystery of love and tells a deeply moving story that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart. One of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the past century, James Baldwin gives us a groundbreaking novel about love and the fear of love.
Humankind: A Hopeful History
by Rutger Bregmenn
It’s a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think – and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society. It is time for a new view of human nature.
Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
The most famous and controversial novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tells the story of Humbert Humbert’s obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze.
Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy
by Rachel Krantz
When Rachel Krantz met and fell for Jacob, he told her that he was looking to make a commitment–one that did not include exclusivity. Both anxious and excited at the prospect of a different way to commit, Krantz entered a relationship built equally on love and liberation. And as an inveterate journalist and writer of extraordinary perceptiveness and emotional nuance, she not only put her heart on the line, but kept painstakingly detailed notes, interviewed other couples, and relentlessly interrogated her own emotions as she went down the rabbit hole of non-monogamy.
We Need to Talk About Kevin
by Lionel Shriver
Eva never really wanted to be a mother and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklyn.
The Handmaid’s Tale
by Margaret Atwood
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now.
Sing You Home
by Jodi Picoult
A stillborn baby ends Max and Zoe’s marriage. Max leaves Zoe and turns to drinking. Zoe falls in love with a female school counselor, Vanessa. Max finds help for his drinking problem through his brother’s church. Vanessa and Zoe get married. Vanessa offers to carry one of Zoe and Max’s fertilized embryos. Zoe goes to Max to get permission to release the embryos to her but Max’s new found religious fervor leads him to sue Zoe for custody.